loughery111
Banned
Actually it just might make it competitive.
(best I can do at the moment. I'm looking for a better source. I think their statement regarding coal is way off base.)
Torqumada
It's from a site that sells home solar kits, for Chrissake! Everything about modern-day solar suggests that giving it all the subsidies we can would still just be pouring money down a hole, when it could better be spent on just about every other clean(ish) energy technology we have and on research to make sure that when we do start using solar in earnest, it's the best stuff we can possibly get.
It's certainly possible that an early POD that seriously pushes solar, and solar only, could make it much more competitive and give it a subsidy regime that will prop it up as well. But 30% is pushing Apollo+Manhattan+TVA levels of investment. Additionally, any sane energy policy in the 1960's or 70's is going to push nuclear first, wind second, and solar only third. Even then, solar will likely be the centralized mirror-tower kind, as photovoltaics sucked back then.
EDIT: Also, the supposition that coal would never have beaten out watermills, wood, or steam (definitely not a power source... and largely generated by burning coal, so I don't follow that line of idiocy) without subsidies is either miserably misinformed or a bald-faced lie. Coal trounced water in portability, enabling factories to be built near populations, and wood in energy density. What subsidies they're referring to is beyond me.