No, we should have (and still can) built intelligently. It is perfectly feasible and has lower lifetime costs (often lower capital costs by eliminating mechanical systems) to just build insulated buildings, with heating loads low enough so that 1 or 2 space heaters are needed 20 days a year. But our failure to build good buildings in the Midwest is matched my our bretheren in the desert southwest. Unfortunately their challenges are multiplied by developing an inhabitable wasteland.

and at the end of the day you waste your time commenting on slashdot same as me. Glad you use that financial freedom so wisely.

Read about it then. There is no dearth of material based on observation and fact. Peer reviewed research articles. Films. Investigative journalism.

go red team! http://www.sciencedaily.com/re...

But it uses all of them, which makes it easier to spot errors, discrepancies, and agendas, which can then be the focus of additional investigation.

you DO NOT need to be on ranting against something you can easily ignore, yet here you are. I don't need internet connected devices. I want them and I will have them. Russian hackers can turn off my lights or watch my cameras. Or maybe sell my occupancy data to a super high tech burglar team who can rob me of a few thousand dollars of old electronics and furniture. Even worse they could disaggregate my electric loads and discover my large appliance run times. truly frightening.

Oh yes share your wisedom

Only a miserly 30% of all energy is consumed by buildings. Constructing buildings for less capital than conventional construction methods while using 40% less energy is such stupid "green" thinking. I'll continue supporting the mindless squandering of energy because "civilization is energy," energy waste is a benefit to mankind, and energy efficiency doesn't scale.

Besides capital and operating lower costs, improved comfort and control, and higher reliability aren't all that "better" anyway. Green idiots!

I'll never let them deprive me of my poorly designed, poorly constructed, expensive to operate, quickly depreciating traditional American construction.

And who the hell are those green idiots who think semiconductor based solid state energy conversion devices will scale? Total idiots, when did that idea ever work??

No need to insist China do anything, they are most rapidly greening economy on earth. They installed 40GW of wind and solar last year. Their 5 year plan will install as much wind and solar as the rest of the world combined (unless India grows serious about their plan).

How you otherwise shore up the necessary capital resources for global/monumental industrial change without charging for access to them. Risk is everywhere. Failure is frequent. How do you overcome that inevitability without assigning a cost to borrow resources to try? Who would lend the resources to create economies of scale necessary to make semi conductors, solar energy, and (soon) batteries affordable? Are you suggesting volunteers in their basement can collectively get together and somehow develop a billion(s) dollar battery factory or an entire city dedicated to the manufacture of polysilicon solar panels?

I think you are right. It has been surprisingly difficult for me to come to terms with that over the years. I guess win-win, if they win by squeaking out 6-9% margins on old assets while renewables grow to terrawatts by 2025, expanding 100x like the have over the past decade. Seems like a bizarre choice: 6x return over 10,000x, but I'm not complaining! Only 100x to go.

yes, really. EIA publishes the costs of generation annually. solar is cheaper than all 7 types of new coal generation facilities, all fuel cell and nuclear facilities, both types of biomass facilities, wind, geothermal, solid waste, small hydro, even new large hydro facilities.

Did you know that Chinese solar panels have 25% to 300% tariffs in the US ? Full stop. Haha, what is the ITC subsidy your clamoring on about again? Similar arrangement in the EU. They could sell for .55 $/kWh, but they sell for mid 0.70s because US mfgrs (actually German owned, fake US corp, asian mfgers) lobbied for tarrifs because they cannot compete against state of the art chinese solar manufacturing cities, who have completely up to date US made equipment and better economies of scale. To be blunt, you parrot talking points of people who most likely have no idea what they are talking about or 2) have some other agenda (preserving their depreciated energy production assets)

solar (arguably) remains more expensive than ~3-4 of 5 types of natural gas generation, but given the uncertainty of natural gas prices over the next 30 years and the fact solar is cheaper than all 5 types of at only moderately higher gas prices, it seems like a fairly conservative economic hedge. Solar and natural gas also pair wonderfully. Solar also will not be subject to export competition when LNG terminals are built and export capacity ramps... to sell gas at 3x the price to europe/asia

Solar today is installed at a fraction of the cost of most of California's gas infrastructure (and astonishingly expensive peaking gas infrastructure) -which is major factor in their costs...

Solar plants are going up for $1200-$1300/ W these days, without subsidies, international developer/manufacturers are making 20% gross margin in these projects.

Solar only appears expensive when compared against fully depreciated, dirty coal infrastructure. When it comes to the inevitable grid modernization solar fills a massive hole (20-40%), there is ample opportunity for hundreds of billions of dollars of cost effective solar investment. Approximately 35 to 40% of those costs is literally revenue that the US and EU gave away to Chinese solar conglomerates, mostly due to myopic thinking of entrenched institutions and the failure of smart people (probably yourself) to assess the progress and trajectory of the solar industry over the past 30 years.

The commoditization of solar energy into the most accessible low cost energy resource has gone according to plan (predictions) for over 30 years actually its convincingly ahead of schedule since 2005, mainly due to the Chinese factor. The idea that in 2015 when renewables (wind+solar) are now the largest (annual production addition) and fastest growing energies on earth and I'm still combating against the same ignorant arguments is hilarious.

I've now realized there will be no "ah ha" moment, where I told you so. No daay will come where my industry will be thanked for growing the economy and modernizing our infrastructure and perhaps alleviating co2 production. The ignorance will just slip into the darkness, as it has over the last decade as monied interests quietly switch sides, and we'll have to pretend it was never really there. Oh well, at least I put my money where my mouth is a decade ago. Thankfully so have hundreds of billions of dollars of private investment. Its an unstoppable force. =) From these hundreds of billions we will reap trillions because the cost of capital of solar energy has been the last hurdle. And hilariously, features that were nonsensically attacked as the weaknesses of solar by agenda driven institutions, are now recognized as the strengths. A solid state device aimed at the sun for 25+++ years with 1% OP EX, competetively installed today with guaranteed fixed pricing. Game over. Good luck hedging natural gas costs for the next 30 years at 2015 prices. LoL.

In 2014, the UK was the largest market for solar energy in the EU.

Considering the pace at which this energy was added to the grid, it is news worthy. Considering coal (and large hydro and nuclear) are all about ~9% each in California, it will only be a handful of years until solar surpasses power production from each coal, nuclear, and large hydro.

Perhaps then solar detractors will rubber neck at the remarkable progress in the industry. It will be hilarious over the coming decade as the raw economics drive us to abandon domestic resources (coal, gas) in favor of Chinese (or Malaysian) manufactured solar panels. Exporting billions of dollars to China after handing them this giant industry (inevitably one of the world's largest) on a silver platter.

I wonder how the myopic thinkers will react to this scenario. Of course, we'll have to wait a decade for them to realize what has already happened.

let me know when you complete this irrelevant wandering and we can get back on topic, which was that the capricious and diminutive support of renewable energy in the US will be the most costly squandered opportunity in the history of capitalism.

Your right it has nothing to do with the insignificance of nuclear energy in China. Also coal is no longer the benchmark of cheap energy generation. Its natural gas. Welcome to the 21st century.