https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-2017/ The question highlights an increasingly obvious aspect of the situation: it's never been about large scale economics, really. If it had been, there would be no operating nukes in the US outside of the military, for starters. It's always been a political matter - how do we want to live?
Remember this? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/02/rick-perry-fossil-fuels-sexual-assault Fossil fuels to power a freaking light?! One would think that the dishonesty, the opportunism, and the blatant greed here would be apparent to anyone with a high school diploma, but apparently, in an age where more than half the populace are cyborgs (i.e., wholly incapacitated without their smart phones), thought and reflection is too much to ask.
When I was a little boy, my uncle Nick had a small coal mine that he worked with his 2 sons Jean and Jerry and a mule. After I promised to stay on the back of the mule, they let me go down in the mine with them, Really nice mule, if I slid to the side, he.she.it(?) would adjust his/her/it's back to keep me centered. the mule would walk from the face to the shaft, then back again---------always light at the end of a long black tunnel---sunlight at the shaft, and their carbide lamps at the face. Some of my happiest hours were on the back of that mule. meanwhile I do not like strip mining and mountain top removal really sux. So then, fucking up nature for export $ then also sux. Mining pay is above average, but Nick died of the black lung within a couple months of retirement,
