“The range of energy possibilities grouped under the heading ‘solar’ could meet one-fifth of U.S. energy needs within two decades.”

– Robert Stobaugh and Daniel Yergin, “The End of Easy Oil,” in Stobaugh and Yergin, eds., Energy Future, Report of the Energy Project of the Harvard Business School (New York: Random House, 1979), p. 12.

”I think … the consensus … is after the year 2000, somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of our energy could come from solar technologies, quite easily.”

 – Scott Sklar, Solar Energy Industries Association (1987).

“Before maybe the end of this decade, I see wind and solar being cost-competitive without subsidy with new fossil fuel.”

– DOE Secretary Stephan Chu, Address to Pew Charitable Trusts, March 23, 2011.

Yesterday’s Part I on the long history of solar power ended with two quotations from energy historian Wilson Clark in his 1974 book, Energy for Survival: The Alternative to Extinction:

“In 1908, [Frank] Shuman formed the Sun Power Company and convinced English financiers to back his efforts to build larger plants using the flat-plate collectors.

“In 2014, more than 40 percent of its resources went to renewable energy projects. Environmental advocacy groups such as Greenpeace largely support OPIC’s recent emphasis on renewable energy, but still criticize OPIC’s continued support of energy-related projects that use fossil fuels.”

A small victory for taxpayers and cronyism foes occurred today with the expiration of the charter of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a government lending agency. The agency is still open, but like its sister the Export-Import Bank (EXIM), whose charter expired this June 30, it cannot engage in new business.

OPIC and EXIM remain open to service existing loans, however, and reauthorization would bring them back to full life.

Background

OPIC’s three key policy objectives are to:

1. Stimulate economic development in developing countries;
2. Make foreign policy gestures on behalf of the U.S.

I have previously written about climatologist Judith Curry‘s continuing challenge to politicized climate science. “One plus the truth equals a majority,” I subtitled Part I back in May.

MasterResource has also covered Climategate, in which emails appeared that contained such statements as “I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but it’s not helping the cause, or her professional credibility.” (Dr. Michael Mann, IPCC Lead Author, May 30, 2008)

The Grand Dame of Climate Science is maintaining her prolific output at Climate Etc, which now includes energy- and policy-related commentary. Her posts, and guest posts by others, are increasingly multi-disciplinary, questioning not only the trumped consensus of physical climate science but also the postmodernist notion of preferable, competitive “clean” energy.…

ExxonMobil CEO mocks renewable energy in shareholder speech, the headline of Adam Lerner’s May 27th Politico article read. Lerner’s piece began:

How refreshing!…