So, what's the holdup?
The answer is technology. We just are not close enough to the technolgical breakthroughs necessary to make fully-renewable energy viable. Wind power is highly capital and maintenance intensive and it faces strong local objections based on aesthetic and environmental grounds. Same is true of solar electric power which is capital intensive with high depreciation due to the long-term degradation of solar panels. Solar gets heavy government subsidies and still fails to be profitable (Solyndra, and growing list of other failures). Research on promising renewable energy options will and should continue while we shift fossil fuel power generation to natural gas and move forward with newer, better and cleaner nuclear power, such as the thorium reactor being built in India. Research will decline rather than progress in the face of a crippled economy where $10 per gallon gasoline, rationed power and other "tolls" favored by the green tyranny. Public opinion shifts much like the wind that drives (sometimes) the wind turbines and whichever way it blows, it will not make renewable power materialize out of half-baked technology.
