Engineers and contractors can’t make good business decisions without making doubly certain that their data are good and their understanding of their market is clear-eyed and accurate. President Donald Trump’s ill-informed dismissal of the economics of the renewable-energy industry therefore is as disturbing as his ignorance of the economics of the fossil-fuel industry. Without evidence, he asserts that renewable energy is unreliable and too costly, and with equally weak justification, he thinks he can support natural-gas development and the revitalization of the coal industry simultaneously.
Just two weeks before the election that made him our president-elect, he asserted that clean-energy advocates “want everything to be wind and solar. Unfortunately, it’s not working on large-scale.” But Texas has installed more wind-generation capacity—18,531 MW with additional 5,040 under construction—than any other state, and Iowa currently is serving nearly 40% of its electrical load with wind energy. MidAmerican Energy is investing $3.6 billion in building 2000 MW of wind energy in Iowa and is ultimately aiming for 100% renewable energy production for its retail customers. That’s MidAmerican Energy, owned by Berkshire Hathaway Energy, the investment vehicle for Warren Buffett, a man not known for making foolish, uninformed investments.