“But nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” (Milton and Rose Friedman, Tyranny of the Status Quo, 1983, p. 115)

“The infant industry argument is a smoke screen. The so-called infants never grow up.” (Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose, 1979, p. 49)

What was said in a previous post regarding wind power’s 14 extensions of the Production Tax Credit also applies to solar power’s Investment Tax Credit (ITC) and its preceding tax favors. From 1978 to the present (46 years), 15 extensions belie the industry’s age-old claims of almost being competitive. Remember the New York Times’ declaration in 1994 (per Enron) that solar was “competitive” with fossil fuels? Remember Solyndra? Joe Romm in 2011: “It is clear that solar and wind are competitive in many situations right now.”…

“But nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program,” Milton and Rose Friedman wrote in their 1983 primer, Tyranny of the Status Quo. And regarding government help for a developing business? “The infant industry argument is a smoke screen,” the husband-and-wife team observed. “The so-called infants never grow up.”

Industrial wind power is certainly not an infant industry, having been demonstrated as grid electricity in the nineteenth century and again during World War II. [1] But it is dilute and intermittent, fatal qualities as against fossil-fuel generated electricity.

And so although the wind interests have claimed competitiveness (actual or impending) since the 1980s, and received a lifeline subsidy in 1992 (below), the U.S. industrial wind industry is as dependent on government largesse as ever.…

“The whole thing is a misdirect. Were any of you serious, it would have been a zoom meeting. All of the stopping climate change proposals are bullshit because they require rounds of GLOBAL CONSUMPTION. Forcing everyone to buy a new stove, water heater, HVAC system and car all at once is not decarbonization, it’s a disaster for the planet. This is all industry driven to force consumption.”

– Steven Lamb, Institute for Sound Public Policy (below)

They had it coming. James Hansen, no less, called the 2015 Paris Agreement “a fraud really, a fake.” And fossil fuels almost a decade later are that much more embedded.

But will the disillusioned true believers want to check their premises and change course?

“The only person who can truly persuade you is yourself,” Milton and Rose Friedman once wrote [Free to Choose (1979), p.…

“The supply of coal and oil, [Frank Shuman] opined, would eventually be depleted. ‘One thing I feel sure of,’ he wrote prophetically in a 1914 Scientific American article, ‘is that the human race must finally utilize direct sun power or revert to barbarism.’”

Energy history brings perspective and caution to the real-world prospects of dilute, intermittent energies becoming 21st century mainstays. The wisdom of history also checks the notion that solar (and wind) are infant industries in need of ‘temporary’ government subsidies. [1]

I recently encountered a history piece about an early solar entrepreneur, Frank Shuman, written by Christopher Dougherty nine years ago for a Philadelphia magazine. Excerpts from Frank Shuman: Finding The Future In Tacony, A Century Ago follow.

Nearly a century ago, Philadelphia solar energy pioneer Frank Shuman toiled in obscurity, dreaming–and building–a solar powered device he felt would change the way the world made energy and did work….…