“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)

The idea of a transition to a “new energy future” is historically incorrect with wind power, grid solar, and battery-driven cars and trucks. All have a history of non-competitiveness with or displacement by fossil fuels. Energy density explains much of why the renewable energy era gave way to a far better world of coal, oil, and natural gas in recent centuries.

This is taken from a 2014 article by Zachary Shahan for Renewable Energy World, History of Wind Turbines.

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1887: The first known wind turbine used to produce electricity is built in Scotland. The wind turbine is created by Prof James Blyth of Anderson’s College, Glasgow (now known as Strathclyde University).…

“The infant industry argument is a smoke screen,” wrote Milton and Rose Friedman in their 1979 classic, Free to Choose. “The so-called infants never grow up.” And several years later, the two wrote: “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” [1]

Previous posts have documented the “permanent subsidies” of industrial wind power (14 extensions) and of solar power (15 extensions). [2] Add nuclear liability protection to this list, although the technology has long been declared safe by the industry and its proponents.

The Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act of 1957 became law as Section 170 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. It was supposed to be a ten-year window to allow commercial nuclear power to prove its economy and safety. But the so-called Price-Anderson Act–capping damage claims “to protect the public and to encourage the development of the atomic energy industry”–is still with us, some two-thirds of a century later.…

“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.…