[trboyden]

If you truly care about cost, efficiency, and the environment, you should be looking at Natural Gas plants [1]. They are inexpensive at $60 million each, are more efficient [2] than all other power generators, provide more power (which will be needed for EVs), and is cleaner when taking into account the full lifecycle costs (construction to decommissioning). They also involve less red tape to get constructed, so they can be built quickly.

But you have to look at the decaying grid as well (another plus for Natural Gas because you could afford to do both). A lot of the power generation is lost in the grid. If you invested there, the current generation facilities could operate more efficiently and you could shutdown the dirtiest/least efficient ones over time.

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/natural-gas-fired-power-plant...

[2] https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/index.php?tbl=T...