Renewable Energy: For Now, At Least, an Industry Driven by Regulation

Below is a picture I took yesterday at the American Wind Energy Association’s annual WindPower expo in Anaheim (just south of Los Angeles), CA, suggesting something very important about the renewable energy industry at this nascent point in its development: it is driven largely by the laws we make at the state level that restrict the damage we inflict our health and our environment. 

As I argue in my most recent book (Bullish on Renewable Energy), this will most assuredly not be the case much longer, as the cost of wind and solar continue to plummet, and as utility-scale storage solutions become feasible.  At that point, ironically, it won’t matter whether we care one scintilla about ourselves and our descendants.