The other thing that Peter Zeihan pointed out a few months ago was that some of these so called green energy options make more sense in some places than others.
Zeihan is a Liberal, but he is also pretty intelligent.
He lives up in the mountains of Colorado. Where he gets over 300 days/year of sunshine. Also, his house is up around 7000 ft. Solar panels work better in COLD temperatures below 50 degrees than they do at 100 degrees. Therefore, they work better in CO or NM than the desert of AZ.
So, Peter pointed out that solar panels make a lot more sense in places like the SW US than they do in Germany. Where it is overcast all the time. Same story around the Great Lakes. Where it is overcast/cloudy a large percentage of the year.
This is the same idea with wind mills. They make more sense on the central plains of the US than other areas.
I don’t want to debate the merits of wind turbines in general. We have beaten that subject to death here for years.
There are several smaller scale wind generation machines that have come out in the last ten years. The most recent one that shows promise is one based on the Archimedes Screw.
It is shaped just like an Archimedes Screw. These are meant to placed on the top of multi story buildings. Where winds tend to be higher velocity.
What makes these better than large scale wind turbines is that they can handle higher wind speeds. They also developed a smaller model made to put on the rooftop of a residential house.
Again, these things actually work in places that tend to be windy.
Easy to install.
Scalable.
Recyclable
Doesn't kill birds
No annoying 'thump thump thump' sounds.
Wind direction doesn't matter. Change in wind direction doesn't matter.
On sale at Walmart
You could mount a 1000 of these in the space it takes for one of the current 'wind turbines' we buy from the Chinese.
Paint them different colors or with patterns to add beauty.
Guess what kind of wind turbines they use in China.