The obsession with “clean” energy doesn’t do anything at all to reduce our dependence on foreign energy supplies. Wind and solar only replace coal and natural gas, resources we have plenty of domestically.
And a natgas plant is a very clean source of energy. The idea that it isn’t is superstitious bugaboo. Its clean and it takes up a very small footprint. Wind and solar, on the other hand, are enormously wasteful of real estate. It takes square miles of land for solar or wind to match what a natgas plant does in a few acres.
"The federal government has to subsidize windmill production through production tax credits of about 1.8¢ per kilowatt. Wind Farms also receive an accelerated depreciation. Wind farms are also land intensive. They produce a fraction of the energy of a traditional power plant but they require 100 times the acreage.
From the National Center for Policy Analysis: to produce a 1000 megawatt power plant a wind farm would require 192,000 acres or 300 square miles. A nuclear plant would need about 1700 acres (or 2.65 mi2), and about 3 mi2 for a coal fired power plant. The transmission lines for the wind turbines would be massive, 12,000 miles just for the array."
The most we can hope for is 5% and that would take ten years.