Why on earth do you think that environmentally friendly disruptions in the energy sector are any different?
Smartphones are being sold because of their advantages in size and communications and most of all because that's what people want. There is a direct demand for them. They aren't the result of government or non-governmental political pressure to shut down PC manufacturing or use, and they bring new capabilities, they aren't simple replacements for the same exact purposes of computers.
A big reason for the great expansion of wind power is politics not the basic economics of it. You have had subsidies, taxes on fossil fuels, purchase requirements, feed-in tariffs etc.
Electricity produced in a coal plant or electricity produced by a wind farm, and the same electricity, they do the same thing for the end user. The coal plant even has the advantage of being able to generate electricity almost all the time.
Sure there is a benefit from replacing coal, you reduce the pollution externality. Is wind less polluting than coal, in direct terms certainly yes, and even counting indirect issues almost certainly less, likely much less. So there is that. But in the end its just another way to produce the same electricity, not some new product that opens up a lot of new possibilities that didn't exist before.
but such wholesale disruptions to existing industries tend to expand the economy
If you have a power plant of any kind, and replace it with another one. That replacement is economic activity. But its using resources, materials, people, land... to recreate what we had not to expand total production. (You can invest enough to increase total production even as you shut some down, but you could increase total production even more for the same resources without the shutdown.)
PV in '17 added more generation capacity than any other energy source
Not exactly shocking when its favored and other energy sources are disfavored by regulatory requirements taxes etc. Also rather besides the point. Its a cost. I'm not even saying that it doesn't provide benefits in the end, or even that it might not in some cases be a worthwhile investment, but the cost is real. For the same cost other benefits could be achieved whether the resources are taxed and spent on something else, influenced by government policies like the solar and wind generation capacity are, or left for people and companies to make their own decisions about without government requirements, subsidies, or nudging.
Figuring out what various costs and benefits of different policies is much more an economic issue than a physics one. Sure economics isn't very strong here either, but it is the relevant discipline. |
