As a Survivalist thinking kind of guy I don't see a need for a lot of this stuff. We make so much more garbage (dangerous and not) than we need. There is a reason my dogs don't crap in their crates. But in the name of "progress" we just have to have the latest little ditty available worldwide. We're spoiled. I know I am. And coal lets me have a high $30 low $40 electric bill per month.
I think the same way. I plan to retire to my farm and buy as little crap as possible and produce as much food and energy as I can on my own.
However, people live in big hot cities and love air-conditioning. That I might live in the woods in Wisconsin with a wood-burning stove doesn't matter to the people in San Antonio.
Nuclear would be cheaper (some argue). A paper I read years ago said the largest impediment to energy producers fighting regulators was the problem of reducing the value of a kilowatt hour so low that it created a disincentive for producers to enter the market.
It'll happen for a variety of reasons... 1) The ongoing and largely successful efforts in Russia to reassemble the empire and secure greater and greater energy assets. This already has Germany trending into their orbit 2) military needs - future units will rely more and more on technology which needs electricity. 3) echoing 1 - much of the world's oil resides in places hotstile to us
there is a wonderful idea proposed regarding solar to make it viable... giantic solar collectors in orbit (like the size of Vermont) collecting 24/7/365. The problem will be transmission. We are already developing the technology. As I understand it one proposal is to transform it into microwaves and beam it to terrestrial collectors. This may possibly even go so far as to personal collector service but a main goal is to use this method to keep our forces energy supplied however remote they may be
