[Rca2000]

Somewhere, I read that conventional renewable energy sources(that is, NON superconducting, non nuclear), like wind, solar and geothermal power, could not be expected to handle more than about 5% of the average power needs, in the best-case scenario!!

[chimera]

Sounds about right to me. In this country, the figure that sticks in my mind is 0.6% of electricity generation came from "renewable" sources, excluding hydropower since that is a "traditional" generation source. But since electricity production is about one-third of all energy production, it represents about 0.2% of total energy production. Kind of hard to run a modern country on totals like that.

But the real fly in the ointment when it comes to things like solar and windpower is availability. Relying on intermittent energy sources for a significant portion of baseload power requirements is a prescription for disaster when it comes to running an industrialized country that depends on high-tech for its living. Not having energy when you need it will leave a lot of people unhappy at best, at risk for their lives at worst.