Originally Posted By Andrew DaviesYeah, we've had solar for decades, and there's large scale wind in use in the US and Europe. They're mature technologies now.

The problem is that wind and solar aren't anywhere near capable of replacing the energy we get from coal. As it is, we're not building enough coal plants to keep up with increased demand. There's no chance at all that wind and solar can replace what we have now much less what we'll need by 2030.

What Obama intends is to make electricity so expensive that we, as Erich notes, will use less. Unfortunately, that also means that our economy, which is heavily reliant on electricity, will slow down accordingly. So he's going to put two brakes on the economy and he's going to start doing it as we're just starting to come out of the bad patch we're in.

That's not wise.

Originally Posted By DonSolar and wind- Wind is here in Oklahoma, Texas, California and many other states in the central states and new farms are going up every day.

Did you know that the University of Oklahoma has signed a contract to have the Borman campus 100% wind powered within 2 years?

Direct solar will take a bit longer, but please remember that wind power is provided by the sun, that it really starts out as solar power.

I think the complaint isn't that wind and solar power won't work, but that the scale of the industry is far too small to make much difference. Indeed, assuming that suitable locations can be found, and new wind turbines continue to be installed at the same pace as last year, and demand for electricity doesn't go up, then wind power can replace coal in approximately a century.

The plan, as briefly stated in this post, will attempt to speed up the pace of that transition, and incidentally cause the price of electricity to rise. Since supply and demand for power are relatively inelastic, the net result is that the price will stabilize at the point where consumers are paying for the cost of power, plus the emissions taxes, whatever they are. For example, an emissions tax of, say, 10% means that the price of electricity will rise by approximately 10%.

In itself, that's not necessarily a bad thing, if your goal is to reduce CO2 emissions. If the goal is to bankrupt fossil-fuel-based electric utilities, then you can keep raising the tax, but the utilities won't go bankrupt until after the consumers do.

With that plus increased energy efficiency we can phase out polluting energy sources like coal and nuclear. Go for clean and green.

Better jobs in it anyway. Where would you rather be? Installing solar panels and wind turbines or mining coal?

Did you know that the University of Oklahoma has signed a contract to have the Norman campus 100% wind powered within 2 years?

Direct solar will take a bit longer, but please remember that wind power is provided by the sun, that it really starts out as solar power.

[Typo corrected at the request of the comment author - J]

Regarding drilling platforms, referring to your comment of a shortage, surely you are aware of the advances in horisontal drilling and the advances in increasing the yield of existing wells.