Glenn Chaffin
Back in 2008, Al Gore urged America "to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years," a goal that he pronounced "achievable, affordable and transformative." His plan was possible, he explained, because the price of the technologies needed to produce no-carbon electricity—solar, wind, and geothermal—were falling dramatically. Was Gore right five years ago? And are the folks at Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and Climate Solutions right now that the no-carbon energy technologies needed to replace fossil fuels are readily available and ready to go? Not really, concludes a new report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Looking at the current state of the art, Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey writes that deploying current renewable energy technologies would be akin to forcing everybody to drive Model T Fords.
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