“There’s a clear line of sight to get there, and no miraculous breakthroughs needed.” Of course, when we do solve the storage problem, this would give solar and wind a major boost, so what to do with those dirty coal plants becomes a real question. Here too, Bill Joy has an idea. “It’s hard to believe power companies would shut down a completely amortized asset that’s still cranking out money every day. What we ought to do is flip the model and make coal plants into emergency backup plants. We can employ one hundred percent renewables for our baseload, and only turn on the coal plants when the
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