Green Energy Is Not Always What It Seems To Be

Yesterday, National Review Online, at its Planet Gore blog, posted a story about a solar energy farm in Indiantown, Florida.   The solar energy farm sits next to a natural gas plant.  The natural gas plant covers 15 acres of land and generates 3,800 megawatts of reliable electricity.  The solar energy farm covers 500 acres and generates 75 megawatts of electricity at its peak. 

The article points out:

"At $476 million (the cost of the solar project), it also means that building a 1000-MW solar array -- the size of an average coal or nuclear plant -- would cost $5 billion, putting it right up there with the most expensive reactors and coal plants with carbon capture. But the solar panels only generate electricity one-third of the time. "We'd love to tell you that solar power is as economical as fossil fuels, but the reality is that it is not," says Lewis Hay II, CEO of Florida Power and Light, which has built the complex.  "It's not a level playing field for renewable versus fossils right now."  Indeed."

I believe that at some time in the future we will have the technology for green energy.  I also believe that energy independence and green energy will evolve as the result of innovation driven by market forces.  To involve the government in the development of green energy simply alters the market and makes it harder for true innovation to prevail.