Oh, joy.

Moniz put strong faith in solar power during remarks Monday at a Washington, D.C., conference. That continues the trend set forth by his predecessor, Steven Chu, who was a staunch advocate of the renewable energy source. “I would argue that I believe that the scale and time frame of impact of solar technology, I believe, again, is underestimated,” he said at the U.S. Energy Information Administration-hosted event. “There are many situations today when solar is in fact competitive.” “We are aggressively pursuing this in many dimensions,” he continued. “I think that’s an example of something we will look back on in 10 years and be surprised at the scope.” … “Costs have dropped dramatically. … This is getting very interesting,” he said.

Why it is that our current Energy Secretary insists upon doubling down on the robustly failed policies of our former Energy Secretary? And I’m not just talking about the well-publicized debacles of Solyndra and Abound Solar, which are symptomatic of a much larger problem. I’m talking about the first-world trend of the past decade or so in which governments around the globe have seen fit to make “investments” on behalf of the unwilling consumers of their respective economies, endlessly propping up a technology that consistently fails to compete against more traditional substitutes in the free market. Why pour so much money into what at this stage is still clearly an inferior technology with no current hope of attracting enough consumers based on its own merits? How is that accomplishing anything productive in the long-term for the sake of alternative energy?

It isn’t that I’m necessarily rooting for solar energy in principle to fail — not even a little bit. If solar energy can muster up a legitimate, efficient, and cost-effective market share, then awesome — but how are we ever supposed to really know that if we relentlessly refuse to give solar energy an actual chance? Secretary Moniz’s predecessor was fond of blaming China and their many state-backed solar companies for flooding and subsequently screwing up the global solar-energy market… which doesn’t provide any clues as to the logic behind the U.S. Department of Energy remaining hell-bent on doing the exact same thing that China’s been doing with rampant federal special treatment.