One commenter mentioned the cost of transmission. A report for the Western Governors Association said we could build 300 gWt near existing transmission lines.
HVDC transmission lines would expand that considerably.
HVDC lines have far less line loss over long distance.(actually anything over 30 miles) They also don’t have the big electromagnetic field that worries so many people with AC power lines.
All the good energy plans include building HVDC lines.
They all include massive buildup of solar, both CSP and PV, Wind, Geothermal,
PHEV cars, a smart electric grid, Huge improvements in energy efficiency and building efficiency and cogeneration. These conservation efforts will have the biggest effect, much less deforestation.
We need to develop better energy storage to modulate the grid, but there are other ways of doing at least part of that job.

Current total Coal nameplate generating capacity is 313 gWt providing 50% of U.S. power, measured in kilowatt hours. Total U.S. nameplate generating capacity is 1075gWt

Clean coal is a myth and at best would be a decade or more away from being ready. And then it would be expensive, much more expensive than solar and wind will be by then.

Same for nuclear It can’t be built fast and it’s fuel source will run out.
It has problems too numerous to list here.
See
http://www.theleaneconomyconnection.net/downloads.html#Nuclear
The Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy
and
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2008/pdf/nuclear_report.pdf

The best heat storage medium is molten salt. It is excellent at holding heat.
The salts melt at about 450 F, and are heated to about 1000 degrees. Some designs use water to store heat. It’s far less expensive to store energy as heat, as to store electricity. At least 20 times cheaper.
So this is solar energy with it’s own cheap energy storage. It should be a top priority in energy policy because it’s the only current renewable technology that can replace the base load power of coal.

CSP plants can be water or air cooled, as well as various closed loop cooling systems. When they are water cooled, they can even desalinize water at the same time.

It’s low tech, quick to build, inexpensive power.
Prices are projected to fall to below 10 cents/kWh as soon as there are 4 gWt generating capacity installed. They are already competitive in some markets at 12-17 cents/kWh. Prices will fall to 5-8 cents/kWh with increased economies of scale.

Good articles about CSP
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/04/14/solar_electric_thermal/index.html

http://climateprogress.org/2008/04/14/concentrated-solar-thermal-power-a-core-climate-solution/

Combine CSP with the distributed energy of photovoltaics all over the country and windpower and geothermal, and we have most of our energy needs met.
All with current technology, which will only get better and cheaper.

We have lots of other promising energy sources like tides, waves, etc and better photovoltaic technology will develop.

However we need to get started scaling up solar and wind right away.

Biomass to methane is something else that can contribute while alleviating some of the impact of methane from cow manure etc.

Parasails for ships can save 10-30% on fuel at a very low cost. Google “Skysail”

Grow industrial hemp to replace trees as a source for paper. Hemp has many other uses.

Make bioplastics to replace much of our petroleum based plastics, using non food crops.

The bigger issue is transporting that power affordably. My guess is that you will lose enough to take away the costs savings but hopefully that can be overcome.

ps- Antiglobalist, how many parts of the pc or laptop you are using were made and assembled in Europe? Perhaps 5%? Leave Asia alone while your at it and save us all the bs bleeding heart superiority complex.

Sorry, but no. No nation would ever rely solely on power produced on another continent – that would he the height of idiocy – except of course the promoters of such a venture.

No, the future of power generation and distribution is local. Never transmitted further than 5 kilometres unless there’s an emergency.

Centralised production of power is an idiots game, as the Eastern Seaboard discovered 2 years ago. Or did you conveniently forget about that?

The future is Electrostatic Confinement or Pulsed Focus Fusion. The end.

Nice article.
Minor nitpick. Watts (and MW and GW) are a measure of a power plant’s capacity to produce power. A 10MW solar plant is still 10MW even in the middle of the night.
Power production is measured in watt hours (kWh, MWh, GWh).

Not correct. Both power capacity and power production are measured in watts. It is energy that is measured in watt-hours.

A power plant generating 10MW of power produces 10MW-hours in one hour, 20MW-hours in two hours, etc.

However, that conversion rate is rising rapidly, exponentially in fact, with MIT developed dye, for example, improving efficiency rates of existing panels by 50% in certain conditions.

Ray Kurzweil predicts that the real solar technology that will answer the planet’s needs is ready in about 5 years due to the exponential development curve in the efficiency of the panels and in the drop in costs to build said panels.