Clearly, wind and solar will be a viable replacement for fossil fueled generation after energy storage gets less expensive and the total cost per Mwh comes down.
That time is not quite here yet but advances are being made rapidly each year.
Once that happens the changeover to safe, non CO2 emitting generation is just a matter of time.
It’s all about the batteries....
“Clearly, wind and solar will be a viable replacement for fossil fueled generation after energy storage gets less expensive and the total cost per Mwh comes down.”
Well, if you crank the math it ain’t that clear - ultimately, the viability of alternatives as primary energy sources comes down to considerations of energy density / power density, which for wind and solar is pretty darn poor. In simpler terms, if you’ve got lots of people in a small area (say the Boston / New York / Washington corridor), you’ve got highly concentrated energy requirements, and to pull that energy out of the wind and the sun, you need lots of physical area to do so, since the energy in those sources is so diffuse (especially compared to the chemical energy of a carbon-hydrogen bond or the nuclear energy of a disintegrating uranium atom). Yeah, you can port over some electrons from distant sources, but that will only get you so far, given transmission losses and other logistical considerations.
But most of us won’t have to worry about finding out the result of the reality of physics colliding with the fantasy of environmentalists - that’s what we’ve got California for.
Agreed—we will get the technology issue solved.
The toughest challenge will be political—the elites do not want homeowners to have the independence of being off the grid.