Solar and Wind to the Rescue? Yes, but Not How You Think

This article describes an extremely important development in the energy business - the deployment of wind and solar to technologies to extract hydrocarbon based fuels, natural gas in this case. This will come as no surprise to those who have read Peter Huber and Mark Mills's excellent book. One of the illuminating points that the book reveals is that we, as a society, use a great deal of energy looking for and extracting more energy, and that by lowering the cost of finding energy over time we have been successful at finding ever more energy. Huber/Mills also decimate the argument in favor of using solar and wind power for fuel, "yes, wind and sun are free, but solar panels and wind turbines are expensive." So, while it makes no sense economically to convert sunlight and wind into energy to heat or light our homes, that doesn't mean that it is wasteful to use these technologies to look for and extract more fossil fuels. The economic cost of wind turbines to tap into a nat gas field is an entirely different animal than the economic cost of the same turbines to replace nat gas in powering the grid. Ultimately, the replacement of fossil fuel energy with solar or wind energy as the "finding and extracting" energy holds the potential to lower the overall cost of energy in our society, both in terms of resouces and environmental impact. Just further evidence that governments should not be picking winner and losers in the energy markets, but should be letting human ingenuity tackle our energy challenges.

P.S. Huber and Mills's book is a must read for anybody who wants to talk intelligently about energy, regardless of what policy side you want to advocate.