The Future: Natural Gas and Wind
The reason why is simple: the EIA shows two different current technologies that are cheapest to build at this time: under "dispatchable" (available all the time) natural gas. Under "non-dispatchable" (just about any renewable source): wind.
Recent history shows that these two technologies are taking increasing share even now.
(Spreadsheet with history can be downloaded here: http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/#electricity
Choose the spreadsheet for "Total (All Sectors)". Below figures are taken from that one.)
Since 2000, nat gas electric generation has increased from around 600,000 million kWh, to 1,230,708 million kwh. Wind has gone from 5593 to 140,088 million kwh.
In fossil fuels, the big losers have been coal and oil. Electricity generated from oil is now down to a mere 22,900 million kWh, not much above geothermal (16,791) and way behind wind.
Solar isn't making much headway at all, which is consistent with the first link above showing the cost of solar to be well over the cost of wind. In fact, all of the accumulated electricity generation measured by the EIA from solar comes to 18,512 million kwh since they started to measure it, less than the single year increase in wind power: 19,912.
So there you have it. The future will be nat gas and wind.
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