Oh, since I wrote this reply for /., here’s my defense of wind power:
An interesting analysis, and while I agree w/ that nuclear power would be far preferable to coal, (and without discussing further viability issues), I would just like to point out that wind power in the US should not be ruled out offhand. From the abstract of the 1993 Wind Energy Potential in the United States study by D.L. Elliott and M.N. Schwartz (which supercedes the 1991 study cited):
Good wind areas, which cover 6% of the contiguous U.S. land area, have the potential to supply more than one and a half times the current electricity consumption of the United States. Technology under development today will be capable of producing electricity economically from good wind sites in many regions of the country.
So yes, in theory, wind power could meet our power needs (but not w/o being coupled with advanced battery technologies.
Even cost per kWh, Wind does ok. From a March 2004 briefing published by the World Nuclear Association on The Economics of Nuclear Power, shows a present day cost of about 3.7c/kWh. A recent AWEA analysis of the The Economics of Wind Energy [PDF] places the cost/kWh for a 51MW wind farm at between 2.6-4.8c/kWh depending on wind speed. Even if we account for backup power and double the cost, we’re not doing too badly either way.
Coal is at about 3.3c/kWh, but when calculating in the external costs “to put plausible financial figures against damage resulting from different forms of electricity production for the entire EU” as done in the decade long EC ExternE studies. Total cost [after adding the additional external costs] of both nuclear (+0.4 euro cents/kWh) and wind (+0.1-0.2 ec/kWh) end up beating the snot over coal (+4.1-7.3 ec/kWh).
Regardless, I agree with Lovelock. We really need to dump fossil fuels now.
BTW, as far as batteries go, Argonne Labs has been developing some advanced energy storage techniques includeing using high temperature superconductors for both magnetic as well as magnetic bearing flywheel storage (20kWh containment w/ 99% conversion efficiency and 0.1%/day idle loss); fuel cells / other electro-chemical storage would be options as well.