Renewable Energy Not Cheap, Not Green?

Abstract

A multi-billion-dollar government crusade to promote renewable
energy for electricity generation, now in its third decade, has resulted in
major economic costs and unintended environmental consequences .
Even improved new generation renewable capacity is, on average, twice
as expensive as new capacity from the most economical fossil-fuel alter-
native and triple the cost of surplus electricity.
Solar power for bulk generation is substantially more uneconomic
than the average; biomass, hydroelectric power, and geothermal projects
are less uneconomic. Wind power is the closest to the double /triple rule.
The uncompetitiveness of renewable generation explains the em-
phasis pro-renewable energy lobbyists on both the state and federal lev-
els put on quota requirements, as well as continued or expanded subsi-
dies . Yet every major renewable energy source has drawn criticism from
leading environmental groups: hydro for river habitat destruction, wind
for avian mortality, solar for desert overdevelopment, biomass for air
emissions, and geothermal for depletion and toxic discharges.
Current state and federal efforts to restructure the electricity indus-
try are being politicized to foist a new round of involuntary commit-
ments on ratepayers and taxpayers for politically favored renewables,
particularly wind and solar.