Chapter 29 - Renewables and Conventional Wishdom

Sometimes, in order to better understand how people think, I’ve asked, ‘Why do you think renewable energy, like sunlight and wind, is desirable?’ More than once, the answer has been: ‘Because sunlight and wind are free!’ What? Please tell me which energy sources aren’t free. Surely, oil and uranium in the ground are free. So is coal. The cost comes in the equipment that harvests the source - transforming it into a currency—and then in the cost of the technologies that deliver the services, in the wages of people operating the systems, and so on. In fact, per unit energy, it costs more to harvest wind and sunlight than to harvest coal or uranium.

 

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