70,000 megawatts of solar photovoltaics and 141,000 MW of on-land wind . By contrast, the Department of Energy hopes by 2035 to amass 900,000 MW of solar photovoltaics and 500,000 MW of on-land wind generation. This would constitute 13-fold and 3.5-fold increases in solar and wind, respectively, in just more than a decade.
Once generated, green electricity requires transmission lines to reach consumers. A glaring problem is that America lacks too many of these transmission lines. Thethat, “Already, a lack of transmission capacity means that thousands of proposed wind and solar projects are facing multiyear delays and rising costs to connect to the grid.
The only way Washington can further this breakneck and seismic shift is with something else that’s green: Taxpayer dollars. Therein lies the economic incongruity of the environmentalist position. Clean-energy facilities, i.e., wind and solar, can function as reliably and cheaply as fossil fuels, environmentalists say, but only a pirate’s ship of taxpayer-funded subsidies can induce industry and consumers to adopt them.
This contradiction resolves itself immediately when one realizes the truth that clean energy often can’t compete without subsidization in a free market. “Since sunlight and wind are, by definition, impossible to dispatch at will, the obvious critical issue is in how to fill gaps of unavailability,” the Manhattan Institute’s Mark MillsCongress. “There are only two ways to do so: Maintain or build additional conventional, dispatchable back-up capacity, or build lots of electricity storage.
Both strategies cost far too much, Mills explained. Obtaining the material components of batteries presents further substantial barriers. And the proof is in the