[hackerlight]

I don't like how we talk about 100% renewables as if failing that means failure.

I'm happy with 90% renewables, a much easier goal, while we figure out the diminishing marginal returns later as technology breakthroughs and cost curves do the work for us.

Our objective is to minimize the area under the curve of future emissions. It's not "net-zero" in the abstract. Net-zero is just a proxy for the true objective. Getting to 90% renewables soon means less emissions (while being cheaper) than waiting an extra 10-15 years for 100% nuclear.

[gwright]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 90%. 90% of what?

You can't just have 90% of power generated by renewables and 10% by fossil fuels because there are times when you get 0% from renewables and so your fossil fuel plants need to provide 100% of the power. So you spent all that money on renewable infrastructure and didn't even get the benefit of shuttering your fossil fuel plants.

[hackerlight]

90% of power generation on average.

What you've written here isn't persuasive. Are you trying to say that keeping gas peaker plants as a backup will mean renewables are more expensive than nuclear? Where is your analysis that fleshes that out?

[pfdietz]

Especially when a simply cycle turbine plant has a capital cost per kW maybe 5% that of a nuclear plant.