alt Hacker NewsRenewables require power storage. Batteries are large, heavy, expensive, and the power dense ones have absolutely horrendous failure modes.
There are other storage options, but they require even more space than batteries.
Oil and gasoline require very little space, have easy to handle failure modes, and aren’t that expensive to operate. Not expensive enough to justify changing nationwide logistics and support.
It’s also far cheaper to keep using fossil fuels for a year than build out entirely new infrastructure.
I'm not sure the failure modes are too significantly different. I think it's likely you may consider them 'easy to handle' is because there's been years to learn how to handle these failure modes (which is a positive, but for reasons not inherent to the power source itself).
It's always far cheaper to keep status quo X than move to new thing Y. Until it isn't. Especially if you don't take into account externalities. Increased instances of flooding, cyclones, and wildfires gets pretty expensive pretty quickly. Losing ground to competitors can be fatally expensive in the long term.
Such things require the ability and will to think and prepare long-term, and it feels as if humanity has been migrating in the opposite direction since the 70's.