Solar technologies are expensive and require government assistance to turn them into lucrative enterprises, as Germany and Spain have found and as China is now learning. Offshore wind technology is facing the same issue; for example, the wind farm off Cape Cod is costing about twice the average price of electricity in the United States. The assistance, often, is in the form of “feed-in tariffs,” which forces electric utilities to purchase electricity generated from wind or solar technologies at prices high enough to make them viable. Of course, these costs are passed onto consumers through increased electricity prices.
