King Natural Gas

hour. That's cheaper than energy from new coal plants, and far less than the price of even the most efficient wind or solar power when the cost of backup systems for those intermittent sources is taken into account (see chart on facing page).

"Cheap natural gas has taken a big bite out of coal very quickly," says David Victor, an energy expert at University of California, San Diego. "And there's going to be a bloodbath in wind power as well." For investors and technologists hoping to make renewable energy, such as wind and solar power, cost-competitive with fossil fuels, reaching so-called grid parity has suddenly gotten much tougher. Arguably, it's impossible to reach with existing technologies.

The United States is saving about 400

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