Renewable-Energy Fantasy

Decarbonization using today’s technology is beyond astronomical Rupert Darwall - WSJ An excerpt,

There is no objective cost-benefit analysis that could justify the president’s target for renewable energy. . .  Recently Bill Gates explained in an interview with the Financial Times why current renewables are dead-end technologies. They are unreliable. Battery storage is inadequate. 

Google engineers came to a similar conclusion last year. After seven years of investigation, they found no way to get the cost of renewables competitive with coal. “Unfortunately,” the engineers reported, “most of today’s clean generation sources can’t provide power that is both distributed and dispatchable . . .  If Mr. Obama gets his way, the U.S. will go down the rocky road traveled by the European Union. . .

There is no rational justification for policies favoring renewables. In 1972 environmentalist guru E.F. Schumacher wrote “Small Is Beautiful,” taking as his guide what he called Buddhist economics, which he’d discovered in Burma. . .

Mr. Obama’s renewable target is a triumph for Shumacher’s Buddhist economics—which amounts to being poor and staying poor. It does not produce jobs, growth or prosperity. 

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