“The range of energy possibilities grouped under the heading ‘solar’ could meet one-fifth of U.S. energy needs within two decades.”
– Robert Stobaugh and Daniel Yergin, “The End of Easy Oil,” in Stobaugh and Yergin, eds., Energy Future, Report of the Energy Project of the Harvard Business School (New York: Random House, 1979), p. 12.
”I think … the consensus … is after the year 2000, somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of our energy could come from solar technologies, quite easily.”
– Scott Sklar, Solar Energy Industries Association (1987).
“Before maybe the end of this decade, I see wind and solar being cost-competitive without subsidy with new fossil fuel.”
– DOE Secretary Stephan Chu, Address to Pew Charitable Trusts, March 23, 2011.
Yesterday’s Part I on the long history of solar power ended with two quotations from energy historian Wilson Clark in his 1974 book, Energy for Survival: The Alternative to Extinction:
…“In 1908, [Frank] Shuman formed the Sun Power Company and convinced English financiers to back his efforts to build larger plants using the flat-plate collectors.
“Not satisfied with such direct benefits as he derives from sunshine, man has developed numerous ways of utilizing solar radiation indirectly and of appropriating energies other than his own.”
– Erich Zimmermann, World Resources and Industry (Harper & Brothers, 1933), p. 43.
“Although much interest in the scientific community has been focused on solar energy at various times in history, widespread development of solar power equipment has never been achieved—primarily because of the high cost of developing solar power compared to that of technologies utilizing cheap fossil fuels.”
– Wilson Clark, Energy for Survival: The Alternative to Extinction (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1974), p. 379.
Solar electricity has a long history, not unlike its cousin windpower. The infant industry argument does not apply, and solar’s diluteness and intermittency suggest that this off-grid starter energy will not be an on-grid resource this century if not far beyond.…
“The federal tax code is already overly complex and needs to be simplified. It would be far better to remove all subsidies, set-asides, and special treatment for all forms of energy than create new complexities through the NAT GAS Act.”
This letter to Congress was sent by American Energy Alliance, Americans for Prosperity, Club for Growth, Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, Freedom Action, The National Center for Public Policy Research, and Sixty Plus Association. It is reproduced here for its educational value in the general debate over special government favor to politically correct energies.
Dear Senator:
We are writing [in regard to] amendment 1782—the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions (NAT GAS) Act.
Members of this coalition have previously written to Congress to oppose both this NAT GAS Act in January of this year and the previous version in May of last year.…