Fox News explains why solar power works in Germany, but not here.

[bobabode]

Mini, The idea of solar, wind, geothermal etc. presently is to not replace every dirty source (coal, oil, NG, nuke) power plant. It is to augment it, thereby reducing pollution. BTW, fracked NG is most definitely killing coal. Fossil fuels are all finite, solar isn't. Well, unless you look at the real long term-5,000,000,000 years down the road.

[mini me]

Originally Posted by bobabode

Mini, The idea of solar, wind, geothermal etc. presently is to not replace every dirty source (coal, oil, NG, nuke) power plant. It is to augment it, thereby reducing pollution. BTW, fracked NG is most definitely killing coal. Fossil fuels are all finite, solar isn't. Well, unless you look at the real long term-5,000,000,000 years down the road.

I'm not sure that our national energy policy dovetails with your observations about augmentation. The rate of construction of new coal - fired power plants is declining, and current plants are finding it hard to stay in operation with increasing regulations. Wind power is fine and dandy, but I don't think its proven its viability just yet. Yet, new wind power installations drove up the planned output of wind power ahead of natural gas output last year. Sure, that was due to the prospect of a federal subsidy drying up, but we'll have to see if fracking drives up the contribution of natural gas generated electrical power in a similar fashion in 2013.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-1...s-in-2012.html

And nuke plants, last i heard, were still in a holding pattern.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/09/news...aste/index.htm

[bobabode]

We have a national energy policy? I would love to see that. Got any citations? Have the idiots in control of the House of Representatives heard about this?

[mini me]

Originally Posted by bobabode

We have a national energy policy? I would love to see that. Got any citations? Have the idiots in control of the House of Representatives heard about this?

LOL! Point taken.