The Failed Promise of Innovation in the U.S.
businessweek.com
businessweek.com
This is compounded by the bar being really high and the regulation really thick. What counts as a great innovation in alternate energy today requires at least being competitive with existing technology, which has almost one hundred years of development by tens of thousands of engineers at thousands of companies. It is no wonder it takes longer. And you have to worry (rightly so) the environmental and safety aspects of things that wouldn't have mattered 150 years ago.
All of these things slow down progress and make it more expensive. One of the reason progress was cheap in computer science was because the field was young, but as it matures we will see a slow down in innovation. Only fools will continue to believe Moore's "law" has any truth looking 20 years into the future.
What counts as a great innovation in alternate energy today requires at least being competitive with existing technology, which has almost one hundred years of development by tens of thousands of engineers at thousands of companies.
That also applies to coal vs charcoal.
Add in fluctuating energy prices (read: shipping costs), medical insurance premiums that rise year on year, and it's difficult to see what your costs will look like in five years.
In short, I agree: it looks expensive out there.
However, several of the largest fundamental advances in technology came out of pure research, curiosity without the attempt to commercialise. For example, when the laser was first created, the researchers saw no commercial applications for it. Now, lasers are a key component of our fiber-optic communication backbones.
What's needed isn't more innovation; Instead, more patience is needed. More exploration out of curiosity. More investment in pure knowledge. More research.
The fruits of commercial applications will grow off the tree of knowledge only if the tree of knowledge is well nourished.