2) Renewables are not an infant industry but just the opposite, which adds substance to the above post. I posted on the long history of solar, for example with quotations (many from solar subsidy boosters) at http://masterresource.org/?p=5180. Check this out on wind: http://masterresource.org/?p=1274.

By the way, WS Jevons refuted wind and other renewables as industrial energies in his 1865 book, The Coal Question (http://masterresource.org/?p=506).

3) I put together the above quotations some years ago when I was providing Dallas Burtraw of Resources for the Future criticism of his co-authored 1999 paper, “Winner, Loser, or Innocent Victim: Has Renewable Energy Performed As Expected?,” (here http://www.repp.org/repp_pubs/articles/mcveigh/index_mcveigh.html“).

The RFF authors argued that wind and solar costs had gone down and that thus government-favored renewables had met its political promises. I argued that the real issue and promise was to “be competitive,” and renewables were not and would not be. The RFF paper explains how conventional technologies were improving, not only subsidized renewables. And renewables predate the fossil fuel industry. (Remember that the market share of renewables for most of man’s history was 100%.)

4) Politically favored renewables are subsidized much more than oil, gas, or coal per unit of energy produced. I believe EIA and others have documented this clearly.

5) Beware of cost trends to conclude that they will automatically continue. I can quit my job and train at basketball and get an improvement curve going that if extrapolated would put me in a lot of basketball leagues in time. But I am 54, and let’s just say I am ‘intermittent.’

6) Even if solar was cost competitive, solar loses because it is an inferior product compared to other forms of grid electricity. Would you buy an appliance that had a trick motor (don’t know when it is on or off) if it was cheaper than a reliable one? I doubt it.

7) Global warming? I invite you to check your premises about market failure and compare government failure to market failure. It is adaptation time if you are a political realist. Just do the math.

- Robert L. Bradley, Jr.

To be convincing, this article needs to address the historic trend in cost per peek watt. I have read elsewhere that this value has been decreasing, at an average rate of 20% per year, for a couple of decades. Now if this trend is correct, is sustained for another decade, and is not in some way misleading, then the predictions that this article ridicules are in fact reasonable estimates.

So the article needs to argue that this trend is misreported, will not continue or is misleading. As the article fails to do this, it does not address the reason behind the recent bold predictions made by advocates of solar power, and it is unlikely to convince anyone aquainted with the historic trend above.

It also fails to consider the massive subsidies given to carbon intensive energy sources, in direct and indirect forms (coal tax breaks and oversees military expenditure for example). It is by no means clear, that carbon intensive energy gets less government help than solar and wind.

Finally, any comparison of carbon intensive and low (or neutral) carbon energy sources, must consider the external costs associated with global warming. The scale of that externality is huge, and it is certain that, were this externality internalized, wind power would be cheaper than coal.