In a word, no. Renewable technologies haven’t achieved anywhere close to the market penetration proponents hoped, according to some of the best work I’ve seen on the topic from the thinktank Resources for the Future.

BUT, solar and wind technologies have been chasing moving regulatory and cost targets while dealing with very inconsistent government research, development, and deployment support. Up through 2000, when this study was conducted, renewable energy had actually hit the cost targets used to justify governmental support. (Government support, however, has rarely kept up its side of the bargain.)

“The most important measure of success would seem to us to be the cost of electricity generated from renewable technologies compared with the expectations that served as the justification for public-sector support,” the study’s authors conclude. “According to this measure, renewable technologies have met the goals set for them, and could be considered an important component of an ongoing movement toward sound energy policy.”

This could mean that the technology itself has actually performed better than people expected because the cost has come down without the benefits that come with scale. (And forecasters were undoubtedly banking on scale to help.)

Here’s the abstract.

This study provides an evaluation of the performance of five renewable energy technologies used to generate electricity: biomass, geothermal, solar photovoltaics, solar thermal, and wind.  We compared the actual performance of these technologies against stated projections that helped shape public policy goals over the last three decades.  Our findings document a significant difference between the success of renewable technologies in penetrating the U.S. electricity generation market and in meeting cost-related goals, when compared with historic projections.  In general, renewable technologies have failed to meet expectations with respect to market penetration.  They have succeeded, however, in meeting or exceeding expectations with respect to their cost.  To a significant degree, the difference in performance in meeting projections of penetration and cost stem from the declining price of conventional generation, which constitutes a moving baseline against which renewable technologies have had to compete.