I support James Hansen's advocacy for a price on carbon and a shut down of coal.  

I do not know much about wind nor eSolar, but I do know that sunlight is cheaper than coal.  And collecting solar energy is cheaper than burning coal...  unless you're in a place where the sun does not shine.  

$100 solar thermal will deliver, depending on climate, 0.5 to 1.3 barrels of oil equivalent steam heat per year for at least 25 years.  Do the math.

"We think we need to get in the range of 1 to 3 cents per kilowatt hour to be cheaper than coal,"

from the guy at google who is going to run the renewable project.

Lotsa luck.

This article assumes that putting a price on carbon emissions is the only way to level the playing field so that renewables can compete. But in fact CO2 is only one of the costs of coal-burning currently being externalized. The province of Ontario chose to shut down its already existing coal plants because they calculated they would save more in healthcare costs (paid by the government there) than it would cost. This takes into account SOx and NOx and such, but probably did not consider the problems of coal ash disposal, leaching into water supplies. Certainly it did not consider CO2 emissions. It also certainly didn't consider any of the damage of coal mining (Ontario has no coal mines) These include devastation of the land in strip mining, acid mine drainage in underground mining, black lung in underground miners and white lung in surface miners. Here in WV, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and others just won a legal victory against mountaintop removal valley fills, which may end up changing practices.
So there is a possibility of OTHER externalized costs of coal coming home to roost where they belong, and driving up the artificially low cost of coal-fired electricity, in addition to the GHG issue. Admittedly the global climate change issue is the likeliest to make change soon--but activists on this issue have allies in the coal producing regions.

The fastest surest route to Google's result would be for them to spend most of their two billion dollars on lobbying for a carbon tax of, say, $50 per tonne levied on all fossil fuels.

All this talk about taxing a cheap form of energy so greener technologies can compete is great, but has anyone stopped to think about the majority of the population who barely makes enough money to get by as it is? Who do you think will have to absorb the increase in price? It all looks good on paper but as history has proven there is a tipping point. I believe we are starting to see this now with the rising cost of energy being pass on to the consumer who now has to decide whether to pay the mortgage or the heating bill. I know lets pull back within our borders and use the war money to subsidize green energy! No more senseless killing just peace and prosperity.