So at latest estimates, the cost of the war in Iraq has been pegged at about $450 billion (conveniently, I no longer need to specify between CAD and USD), though other studies have placed the total economic impact somewhere between 1-2 trillion. We’ll go with the conservative estimate for now.

Total US power generation in 2004 was 4 trillion kilowatt hours. Currently, the amortized cost of wind power is approximately $0.05/kwh. Going by that rate, the total price of converting current electrical load requirements to renewables would be $200 billion. Obviously this ignores the (not insignificant!) issues of intermittency and storage that need to be addressed if you wanted to use wind power for the base load, but this is just a quick and dirty thought exercise.

At that price, you could produce an entirely new renewable energy infrastructure twice over for what the war in Iraq has cost thus far. That also assumes that the market rate for wind power remains what it is today, despite a 50-fold increase in investment (i.e. an impossible assumption). It also doesn’t take into account the money saved by not running all the existing generators - this is all extra.

Feel free to replace wind with nuclear, solar, solar thermal, biomass, hydro, tidal, etc… and recalculate as you please. The results aren’t too different in the grand scheme of things.

Hurrah for securing our future energy independence through military force!