Spending money we don't have and losing much of our energy infrastructure.
At the
very least, that should be an "or" and not an "and", since obviously the money is to be spent on replacing the energy infrastructure. You give as an example Germany's Energiewende. The reason it costs so much is because their plan does
not involve just turning off all their carbon-emitting power plants and returning to the Middle Ages. They could do that for free.
- The US capital cost would be about $18.7 trillion by 2050, if the US were to follow Germany’s course.
What would be the capital cost of meeting our increasing energy needs by an expansion of the present infrastructure?
What about running costs? I seem to remember that after one has made a capital investment in a coal-fired power plant, it is necessary to keep buying coal to put in it. Sunlight is comparatively cheap.
Googling around, I see that the Energiewende is supposed to save more money annually than it costs by 2020. I'll post a link if I can find out the basis for the calculation; at the moment I don't know if it's actually true, but the running costs are definitely something you'd have to take into account, you can't just look at capital costs to see if it makes economic sense. If people did that, our economy would still be based on subsistence agriculture, and this message would be incised on birch bark with a sharp piece of flint and brought to you by carrier pigeon.