This post reproduces a front-page story in the New York Times business section that excitedly reported a breakthrough with solar energy as represented by a heady energy company named Enron. Formed in the mid-1980s, Enron had just entered into the solar business and was destined to revitalize–if not save–the U.S. wind industry just a few years later.

Good press, for a half century now, has created an Enron-like illusion of the coming competitiveness and profitability of solar and wind energies for on-grid electricity. Basic energy physics explains why the sun’s (dilute) flow cannot compete against the sun’s stored (dense) energy embedded in natural gas, coal, and oil.

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“Federal officials, aware that solar power breakthroughs have shined and faded almost as often as the sun, say the Enron project could introduce commercially competitive technology without expensive Government aid.”

“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 wind power. 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 in this century, if not far beyond.…

 “The current strategies major implementations of ‘clean’ energy sources, largely depending on wind and solar, to address concerns about climate change are seriously misguided, and should be abandoned.”

Part I (total usage) and Part II (electricity) showed that fossil fuels dominate primary-energy consumption–and will continue to do so. This expectation comes from a range of official forecasts–but really from the imbedded inertia of the system where oil-powered transportation dominates and power generation is wed to fossil fuels with nuclear in the mix.

The electricity sector is projected to grow to about 50 per cent of the total by 2035; Part III today will attempt to quantify the emissions impact within a range of primary-fuel scenarios along with the associated capital costs.

Wind, Solar Mirage

Regarding the power market, wind and solar will actually play a minor, even inconsequential, role in reducing emissions by 2035.…