Onshore Wind electricity is cheaper than natural gas, nuclear and coal power.

[hunter]

7. Not really. Nobody ever factors in the cost of agile backup power or energy storage.

The filthy fracking gas industry's utopia is wind and solar power backed up by gas turbines or fuel cells. The way the weather and daylight works, this means that by yearly average more than half the electricity on the network will be generated by gas once the system is entirely built out.

The alternative to gas backup power is expensive and/or environmentally destructive pumped hydro projects, which may fail in times of drought unless they use ocean water.

Fracked gas sucks as bad as coal and even makes nuclear power look good.

Unfortunately, by the gas industy's use of the utterly brilliant and deceptive marketing term "natural" gas, and with it's claws sunk deeply into mass media, including public broadcasting, people in general seem to have a positive opinion of combination wind and gas power generation. Being "better than coal" is a pretty low standard to aim for, and in terms of greenhouse gases and toxins leaking into the environment, fracked gas is coal's equal in awfulness.

We could build a society where large centrally managed power grids are less important to our daily living. I think one of the things we ought to be aiming for is homes, offices, and industry that are more self-sufficient about heating and cooling.

A household ought to be able to coast along in reasonable comfort for a few days when the power and gas are off, nobody getting killed by heat or cold, with enough electricity to read by, charge the family smart phones, and make it to the bathroom at night without stumbling in the dark.

We don't need more or "alternative" sources of power, we need to learn how to live comfortably using much less power.