By Conner Mortell
People who couldn’t tell a spreadsheet from a bed sheet are making all sorts of assertions about how “cheap” wind and solar are compared to coal and oil. Their numbers don’t pencil out. From Conner Mortell at mises.org:
In his recent address, President Joe Biden claimed that “wind and solar are already significantly cheaper than coal and oil.” This is flat-out wrong. There are many arguments that can be made for Biden’s claim. However, not only can they all be refuted, but they have all already been refuted.
Alex Epstein, in his book Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less, explains that two facts are ignored when pretending that wind and solar are cheaper. The first is that
solar and wind exist in large quantities exclusively in places where they are given massive government preferences. When you look at where solar and wind are used, you will invariably find subsidies—that is, the government forcing taxpayers to give money to solar and wind companies. Often, governments actually mandate a certain percentage of solar and wind by law.
These “significantly cheaper” sources only manage to be so when we’re paying indirectly for subsidies to make them cheaper. On top of that, this fact merely discusses the ways in which the prices of energy are otherwise distorted through various laws and incentives. The United States Department of Energy lists 1,854 different laws and incentives currently on the books. There are so many various government interruptions in the market that when I first attempted to download the dataset to look at the laws currently in place, it crashed my computer. Energy is one of the most highly regulated markets in existence, all to create the appearance that wind and solar energy are cheaper than fossil fuels.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of Citizens Journal
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