Existing energy storage options other than batteries are either geographically limited, or not feasible. I explain the issues with natural gas storage in anothe

Existing energy storage options other than batteries are either geographically limited, or not feasible. I explain the issues with natural gas storage in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24253317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24253317 You can't just produce natural gas out of hydrogen and air, you need a source of carbon (and the fraction of a percent of the carbon in the atmosphere cannot feasibly be used). Yes, solar and wind can mitigate fossil fuel use in the short term. But there is no feasible way to use them for the primary source of energy without massive amounts of storage. It provides an option to produce some carbon-free energy, but does not provide an option to go from "some" to "all". If we actually want to stop climate change, we need to go for "all". The link you posted does not refute this. The solution proposed in the article is to just use fossil fuel backup plants until a storage solution is found. Germany and California are both already approaching the saturation point for daytime generation. And once you hit that point there's no way to keep going without massive amounts of storage to transfer the excess generation during peak hours to non-producing hours. Intermittent sources cheaply reduce carbon emissions in the short term, but offer no path to fully renewable energy without a miraculous advancement in energy storage. The paper you linked to doesn't refute this. The plan laid out amounts to, "keep burning fossil fuels and hope we eventually figure out energy storage". When the fate of the world is at stake do you want to bet on an unknown and unproven solution, or a solution that has successfully delivered the lion's share of a nation's power since the 1980s?