[Jormundir]

Well the way I see it (speculatively from the outside), the "moonshot" (throws up in mouth) is just the thing you write at the top of the whiteboard. But what you're really up to is solving the 50 relatively smaller, domain specific problems that need to be solved in order for the "moon--hghhh" to be achievable.

This green architecture software is likely a solution to one of those smaller problems. The team was probably so happy with their work they decided they wanted to pursue it as a standalone company. Google let them spin it out and invested seed money as well.