Robust renewables; still just right around the corner

While they may not be in the same league as fusion in terms of being permanently just decades away from making a strong contribution to the US energy mix, renewables are not making the gains forecast by proponents — and with natural gas hovering around $4 MMBtu for the foreseeable future – that picture isn’t likely to change quickly.
Today’s WSJ has a good piece by Russell Gold that helps explain why, even though it’s slightly marred by a misleading graphic that overstates renewable contribution by picturing total US energy use (94.6 quadrillion Btus) and including both hydropower (a source opposed as insufficiently green by most enviros) and biofuels/wood that together account for more than 75% of total renewable energy use.  If we look just at wind and solar — the favored renewables sought to be boosted by renewable electricity standards — the contribution remains a paltry 0.8% of total energy production.  In other words, they have a long way to go and aren’t much further down the path to a robust contribution than they were ten years ago — even with coal generated electricity flat-lined.
As Gold points out, the reasons for this are simple — and difficult to surmount.  First, renewables remain “too expensive to compete head-to-head with fossil fuels” and “too dependent on government subsidies.”  If by some miracle a clean energy standard consistent with the President’s State of the Union address (i.e., that includes natural gas) were to be enac...