I imagine GP's point was that economy of scale is the key, and had people actually listened earlier, the technology was there, it just needed the scale.

We may as well complain that the Egyptian Middle Kingdom's 12 Dynasty didn't properly formulate Euler's formula in 1991 BC. Nobody at the time made it happen so it didn't happen and the same could be said of any improvement.

> Nobody at the time made it happen so it didn't happen and the same could be said of any improvement.

Not in this case. These particular improvements were held back intentionally by megacorporations like Exxon, who spent billions telling lies to the US government, to American people and the rest of the world. Huge efforts were undertaken to ensure that this kind of technology - renewable through wind and solar - would not take off as quickly as it naturally would otherwise.

The 'free market' only works at setting prices if the market knows the risks. In this case, the market not only had the risks actively hidden from them, but they were directly lied to about the risks.

If the market had understood the risks of this technology in accordance with basic economic understanding (which is obviously flawed but hear me out), then renewable energy would have been cheaper than non-renewable energy a long time ago.

That's not to mention the direct oil subsidies provided by the US and Canadian (and other) governments over the last many decades.

2013 was 6 years ago.

Meanwhile, I am confident that the point wind energy becomes cheaper than fossil energy was within reach much earlier than that. Note that without peer-reviewed research - which I am not providing here - this is just my opinion. But I hope it counts.