Can I steal that line?

We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo

It's not going to work for long. Wall Street will take care of it.

That's what you don't get. If you accept this kind of small scale, privately financed developments, you accept Wall Street. If it's private, Wall Street will clean its clock as soon the opportunity comes. At the slightest difficulty, they will come with their bridge loans, their convertible bonds and their PIPEs.

Hmmm...

I think what you maybe miss is that Wall Street is fucked.

Period. Peak Credit.

The only clock they'll be cleaning is the one in their kitchen.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

private ownership are perfect for manufacturing shoes but are a fucking disaster when it comes to running a country.

that is so true...

'economic growth' is great for getting peasants running water, schools, hospitals, good transport links, internet access, solar panels etc. at the 'bottom end' of the food chain.

the same system taken to its absurd level, we see bitter fruit now in the ponzi scheme enronisation of huge wodges of public trust finance, which should be in the hands of low-risk, honourable, sober treasurers, not rabid yuppie gamblers' anonymous predators who, when weighing human against economic costs, always come down in favour of the latter, chewing up finite planetary resources, homogenising and de-skilling ancient cultures and spitting out misery for the many, and a gilded cage of paranoia for the few.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

None of this happened in the local ownership and small-scale-project dominated wind 'market' in Germany, Denmark and Netherlands, and the German PV 'market' even more so. What's more, outside of the USA, private finance can also work on a large scale, with large local regional monopolist private owners of both grid and generating capacity, e.g. Germany until 1998. If you want to paint with a single brush, we could say that nothing works under the Anglo Disease, be it state-funded projects or distributed power with distributed ownership.

But, as someone supporting distributed power with distributed ownership, yet opposes any rail privatisation, I am not one who sees the same solution everywhere.

In the power sector, I do support centralised state ownership of the grid, as well as centralised state ownership or at least coercive coordination of establishing reserve capacities. The state should also be in control of energy policy, and a feed-in law is a (strong) tool of energy policy.

Wind farms, and renewables in general, are not for short-term greedy assholes, unless the financing structure is very fucked up. Local farmers aren't in for it on the short term, either.

To supplement Crazy Horse, the suggestion of parochialism is off also because of the intermittency of most renewables including wind, thus linking up in a coordinated grid is essential. Against your economies of scale is the factor of redundancy and grid stability, while distributed power is not without economies of scale (it is in fields not connected to turbine ownership, manufacture and maintenance).

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}