>Germany is able to generate power using renewable and lower its emissions doing so only because they still have a huge base of coal power (about a third) to mo

>Germany is able to generate power using renewable and lower its emissions doing so only because they still have a huge base of coal power (about a third) to modulate down when wind blows or sun shines. I totally agree that renewables aren't really feasible for providing all power: we'd need massive storage technology to do that, since the sun doesn't shine all the time and it isn't always windy. However, coal could easily be mostly replaced by nuclear for baseline generation. And if Germany doesn't want to do nuclear, I'm sure the French next door would be happy to sell it to them. >I think it's time to get serious and stop pretending we can do everything and that we can avoid difficult choices and zero-sum games, and that we can reach pipe dreams such as "green growth" and all of this bullshit. I agree about the dangers facing us. But I think it's wrong to bash green technologies like solar and wind: they are absolutely viable (in places, obviously wind power isn't feasible everywhere), and can contribute greatly to power needs. No, they aren't a silver bullet, and no, they really aren't able to supply ALL our power needs 24/7. Most other methods aren't either: nuclear for instance isn't really usable for total power generation because it can't spin up and down quickly to meet changing demand. But solar power is getting more efficient all the time, and there is a lot of work on storage technologies, so there is progress, but I also recognize we can't entirely rely on solar/wind for everything yet. Many places are generating large amounts of power with solar, which means there's that much power that doesn't need to be generated with fossil fuels. Personally, I'd like to see coal power phased out completely, as fast as possible, and nuclear brought back (with very modern, safe designs, not 50-year-old designs) to provide baseline power until we can find other ways of providing all the power we need without pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere.