Wind power (and subsidies for its installation) has gotten at least as much attention from most governments, but two prominent thinkers on energy and the economy are making news with their call, in a Financial Times piece, for an international Manhattan- or Apollo-style R&D project “to enable bulk electricity to be produced more cheaply by solar energy than by any fossil fuel.”

 

The call to focus on solar energy is particularly striking given that one of the authors, the chemist and former UK chief science advisor David King, is a strong proponent of nuclear power. (Richard Layard, his co-author, is an economist who has done groundbreaking work on the link between non-income variables, including mental health, and happiness.)