⇒ - Storage: obviously, we’d want to smoothen out the time dimension as well. This means adding storage that can meet 100% of demand as well (volatile sources frequently drop to 0), and feeding it with enough additional clean sources that it can fill every expected gap (and gap accumulation).
And here I’d like to repeat my point from before: the best (most effective) storage we have right now is pumped hydro, by far. And pumped hydro is not enough, by far.
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⇒ - Backup. Of course, anything inherently CO₂-producing is out for this, and this includes gas, obviously, and biomass (maybe less obviously, but think about it). And that leaves?
So, this is my plan: keep building solar and wind till peak demand is sometimes met, build nuclear to replace all the fossil »backup«.
@MattMastodon @Sodis My thinking about biomass: if we don’t burn it, it will not be released as CO₂ to the atmosphere.
I guess the thinking about biomass was: if we only burned biomass, not fossil mass, then we’d have an equilibrium and no problem. But saying that biomass is net-zero gets it backwards. The CO₂ doesn’t care where it’s coming from. It is our task to produce as little CO₂ as possible. The goal is to get below the amount of CO₂ /captured/ by biological processes.
