If you followed renewable energy in the 1980s and 1990s, all you heard about was ethanol. Despite a lack of evidence it would be beneficial, activists - and a government point guard in Vice-President Al Gore - insisted ethanol would save us from fossil fuels.
In 2005, ethanol was finally mandated and subsidized but activists can't take the blame - it was President Bush and a Republican Congress that passed it. Only then did environmentalists and their staff scientists finally give it a critical look and ethanol turned out to be expensive, inefficient and worse for the environment.
This decade, big solar projects promise to be the newest way to have energy efficiently without emissions. Anyone with even a casual interest in math can figure out why it is untrue but, like ethanol, the miracle of capitalism is invoked by advocates; if we subsidize it with taxpayer money, for no reason it will come down in cost.
Michael Haederle of Miller-McCune visits some unspoiled wilderness, places whose vastness and emptiness have made them preferred places for new solar power projects - environmentalists seem to love the idea and solar power companies getting financed by taxpayers are happy to build. The Obama administration is determined to build even more projects like these on federally managed lands (imagine the outcry if Republicans turned them over to oil companies) and environmentalists are cheering.
But what if, at least given current technology, they don't work anywhere near as well as claimed?
Are New Solar Power Projects Anti-Environmental? by Michael Haederle, Miller-McCune
