⚡ What will power the future US economy?

Emerging energy technology — and AI — makes predictions trickier than ever

I’m comfortable with Washington encouraging more clean energy production as an important national objective. This, especially if the goal is mostly achieved by implementing a carbon tax and eliminating regulatory roadblocks. Such an approach would effectively harness market forces to drive the transition to cleaner energy sources.

For example: A group of AEI scholars recently put forward this plan as part of a broader policy blueprint: 

Subsidies for ethanol and other alternative fuels would be abolished (except for basic research on renewable energy), along with energy tax credits and regulations intended to lower greenhouse gas emissions. A carbon tax would be imposed in 2025 at a level of $25 per metric ton of CO2 equivalent, increasing thereafter by inflation plus 2 percent per year.

I would be utterly uncomfortable, however, with policymakers determining the ideal clean-energy mix. What share of US energy production in, say, 2040 or 2050 should come from solar, wind, nuclear, and fossil fuels? Not much confidence in any predictions of that sort, really. Why should there be? How could there be?