> The concept that "solar and wind will save us all" by themselves is fundamentally incorrect, and actually they make things worse in many ways.
Sure, this comes up a lot in these discussions. We don't need to rely 100% on any one type of plant, and we don't even have to eliminate coal plants completely. In the end, we're going to have to use a variety of options to fight climate change, and some of the major ones (like increased efficiency) aren't even going to deal with energy production.
I agree that we'll likely have a mix, but the point I was trying to make was:
Before, we had low variability in demand, so things like nuclear, hydro, and geothermal ("clean" methods of producing base load power) had a chance to compete.
Now, we have high variability in demand, so all of those solutions are out (though hydro is a special case), unless externalities like future-cost of CO2 is priced into production cost via taxes or cap&trade.
Wind/Solar + Storage is too expensive, so the market will shift to wind/solar + natural gas. We'll end up burning possibly more fossil fuel, or roughly the same.
Sure, this comes up a lot in these discussions. We don't need to rely 100% on any one type of plant, and we don't even have to eliminate coal plants completely. In the end, we're going to have to use a variety of options to fight climate change, and some of the major ones (like increased efficiency) aren't even going to deal with energy production.