As usual, the mainstream media is losing its collective mind over the idea of taxing solar and wind power, due to a provision included in the thousand pages of the Big Beautiful Bill.

The important thing here is the fact that the pundits whining about it clearly don’t understand what energy is, in the context of public policy. We must begin by remembering that “energy” can mean many things, depending on the issue at hand. If you ask an electrical engineer what “energy” is, he may specifically describe the voltage itself, and how it travels, but not go further. But in a public policy discussion like this, the voltage is only a very small slice of a much bigger pie.

How is the fuel converted into power? How is it stored? How is it transmitted? How much land, machinery, personnel, and security does the process need? How convenient is it to the users who need it? How much energy is lost in bridging that distance?

Sunlight is free; usable solar power is not.

Wind is free; usable wind power is not.

In public policy, therefore, the cost of the fuel is only the very beginning of the conversation. Coal, oil, natural gas, sunlight, and wind are the fuel.

But what does society have to do to convert those raw materials -- those very different types of fuel -- into power in the electric grid that you and I can tap into -- to power our lights, our air conditioning, our refrigerators and our laptop computers?

Coal, oil, and natural gas are not free coming out of the ground, but they are pretty darned close. By contrast, yes, wind and sunlight are absolutely free; coal, oil and natural gas are just almost free. But there isn’t really much of a difference in cost between the two groups, at the source.

The relevant difference is this:

Coal, oil, and natural gas are all relatively cheap to convert into usable energy on the grand scale. Power plants that use oil, coal, and natural gas are all designed to be........

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