Try $2.50 for that gas.
There was a HUGE tribe of solar/wind supporting Freepers just a few years ago.
And yet one country in Europe, Holland, has used wind power for a couple of centuries.
We have 3 windmills on the farm since 1880 but they only can pump well water.
...Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power’s unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone)...
I believe that the only cost-effective
solar energy is wood pellets.
Washington State law said water power is “non-renewable” leading to several thousand new wind turbines to generate the 20% renewable power mandated by the law.
We had so much water in our reservoirs this past year that utilities didn’t buy any wind power. Turbine owners are angry because they aren’t getting the income they expected.
I toured around south-east WA during a brisk windy day and only 1/3 of the big fans were turning.
Oh yea, California buys our hydro-electric power to satisfy their mandate to use “renewable” power.
Solar and wind have huge potential. They just need to be developed in the free market without government intervention.
The amount of energy that can potentially be tapped from the sun is astronomical. The issues of cost and efficiency are constantly improving. Government subsidy hinders progress because it props up failure and inefficiency like the way the current admin bailed out the auto unions, robbing investors of their legal rights.
Wind energy has much less potential at the ground level, but higher in the atmosphere there is a pretty powerful and constant supply of wind energy. We just need innovation and creativity to tap into it.
The way congress and government in general (as specified by the constitutionally enumerated powers) can further this progress is to provide fair and equitable protection of intellectual property rights for inventors. The move to first-to-file was a move in the wrong direction in my opinion, but the current admin may have actually accomplished some improvements as to the speed at which patents are awarded. Time will tell.