Copied from my comments to Charles comment:

I worked closely with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) on solar energy policy and rollout in California (I’m an engineer and was a lobbyist on green energy - Electric Vehicles and the Power Grid). They were totally clueless about what was important.

I had to dig around at the CPUC and find the transmission engineer who explained to me the importance of DC transmission (almost all our lines are AC for switching when the power generation is relatively close to the city) for long haul power (eg having solar in Southern California and hauling it to Northern California). He complained that nobody there was paying attention to what’s important and his concerns fell on deaf ears. And I discovered that’s because the government officials were totally clueless about BASIC Engineering and the lobbyists from the Utilities were drowning them in irrelevant BS to distract them.

This is exacerbated by the fact that nobody (ie citizens) was interested in engaging in this process. People like to talk about how much they care about green energy, but they won’t (or can’t) actually support people who are involved in this complex laborious process of dealing with the Engineering, Finance, and politics of this extremely complex process. Basically, we’re fucked because our political and 100% capitalist driven environment is totally incapable of dealing with anything complicated.