At the state level, powerful conservative organizations like ALEC, the Heartland Institute, and Americans for Prosperity are waging an aggressive fight against green energy, pushing forward model legislation to repeal renewable energy standards and cut state subsidies for solar power.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115582/solar-power-fight-raging-gop
And while doing this, manage to not point to the subsidies and costs of fossil fuel production (i.e. the debacle in Charleston, which is going to be fully paid for by government or nobody), and tell outright lies to astroturfing groups like "wind power kills all the birds" groups, as well as create myths about how "low frequency sound will kill you". (Funny the weather hasn't killed most of us and that's a lot of dB higher powered.)
We see claims like "wind power will raise the temperature" based on the fact that there may be a slightly warmer area directly behind a wind generator simply because the wind speed is reduced, but stated to imply that wind power causes global warming.
There is similar disinformation in regard to tidal power.
At the same time, ALEC and others push restrictive laws that, for instance, force you to sell your power to the grid, and then buy all of the power you generate back at a higher price (even though they have formalized connection fees as well), deliberately making it uneconomic for the private owner, we see electrical codes that are years behind the technology, and the change there is resisted by insurance companies who don't understand the technology at all.
We have electrical and plumbing codes that disallow using methane-fueled fuel cells (yes, they exist), require the power be sold back to the utility rather than be used in the home, and also disallow reuse of the 50% heat waste as cogeneration for hot water, domestic heat, and thermal cycle A/C, never mind that the generation efficiency of those fuel cells is better than any standard engine cycle efficiency.
There are a host of deliberate, obviously intentional handicaps build into the laws, tariffs, and codes in the USA intended to prevent a safe, reliable, efficient and diffuse grid from being created.
What we have, rather, is inefficient power plants, heavily centralized, in precarious places, with hideously vulnerable transmission and distribution facilities, supplied with fuel (often) over long distances, on a grid of 1930's construction and technology that is just now moving to 1980's era control, sensing, regulation, and control.
You choose why this is. It doesn't matter, our electrical supply in the USA is a pathetic, incompetent, horrid mess, and one that is going to fail more and more and more until people finally move it into the last quarter of the 20th century. (yes, batman, I know it's the 21st now)
