The better, more meaningful, yardstick is profit. This is what we should be focusing on. The main economic reason why the decarbonization of electricity is progressing so much slower than we need it to, I argue, is that most governments worldwide have effectively outsourced responsibility for developing, owning and operating solar and wind farms to profit-oriented private sector actors, and yet the profits that such actors expect to be able to earn from investment in these activities generally underwhelm. It is simply not a sufficiently attractive economic proposition.
