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Renewable energy is not a BAD thing, in an of itself. But a lot depends upon the form it takes.

This past election here in Colorado, we passed an amendment to the state's constitution calling for sizeable increases in the amount of renewable energy produced across the state over the next decade. I don't have a real problem with that, except that the form of power production that is being relied upon most heavily is wind, and sometimes the wind just doesn't blow while at other times it blows too much (have to shut those large wind turbines down above about 50 mph wind speed).

I work at a natural gas fired generating facility, and we are in constant contact with the people who are responsible for maintaining the reliability of the power grid across the state. I asked one of them about wind power the other day, and she said everyone in their office voted against it and that they were all pretty unhappy that it passed because of the reliability issue of having 500 megawatts of power either suddenly appear or disappear from the grid.

Personally, I'd like to see more nuclear plants get built. They are much more cost-effective over the long haul, and their environmental impact is basically zero because they have no emissions.

Just my $0.02, of course.

The problem with wind and solar is not that it is more expensive that gas, coal, oil etc. The problem is that wind and solar facilities can only work in addition to gas, coal, oil etc.

You can not have, for example, 90% of max capacity from fossil fuel production and 10% from renewable sources. You must have 100% available capacity from fossil fuel which you can, of course, take offline when solar or wind is available. The sunk cost of those plants does not go away when they are idle though. This means that comparing costs between fossil fuel production and renewable is meaningless. Renewable energy is always a cost added on top of the cost of producing energy from fossil fuels.

"I don't have a real problem with that, except that the form of power production that is being relied upon most heavily is wind, and sometimes the wind just doesn't blow while at other times it blows too much (have to shut those large wind turbines down above about 50 mph wind speed)."

Which is why you tie those wind generators to electrolyzers and make hydrogen, instead of trying to tie directly to the grid. Ditto for solar.