Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

The area of the United States will not support 300 million people living like the Amish.

Never said it would but if the grid,market or both crash those 300 M will wish they were Indian/Amish/Farmers

AHhhhh   Whoooooo!

good suds

Coal would be the lowest hanging fruit to close and replace.  It still would not be easy, we'd be shutting paid for plants before their time.

But coal is a pretty dirty fuel all around.

I don't mind the climate conversation being open-ended. I even like it -- when it's done the right way, at least. I probably think "the right way" is some kind of humble, honest and curious. Usually, being skeptical is using one's brain healthily. (To neither blindly trust someone else's brain nor one's own.) Of course, there are limits to skepticism being healthy. And we can bet that one of the bad limits is to be so rigidly tribal as to become unwelcome of well conceived experiments whose results are inconsistent with one's hypotheses.

Definitely 

Natural gas has grown a lot to be sure, but I do think that growth is going to start slowing down as renewables continue to get cheaper and states keep increasing their renewable portfolio standards. Renewables are already being deployed faster than gas generation in most parts of the West and Great Plains. Furthermore, the fully regulated utilities in the Southeast (which own most if not all of their generation) have to submit their plans for future investments and generation (among other infrastructure), and most of them or choosing to invest more in solar compared to gas or anything else (wind is not viable in the Southeast due to lack of generation potential), particularly in Florida and the Carolinas..... It's in the deregulated parts of the Northeast that has been more challenging to deploy renewables because that's where the gas production is and wind & solar are not as productive there as other parts of the country. Even then, East Coast states are starting to think about off-shore wind, which could be best solution, once it becomes cheaper.

The longer-term upside of natural gas is that it that it's infrastructure can accommodate hydrogen, which can be mixed with it, and eventually displace gas. This applies for heating and generation. The UK and Australia are already starting to test this out.

How do you get hydrogen?

It's not a primary fuel.

Probably through electrolysis primarily, but I know there are other ways to do it. The reason electrolysis is probably the best solution in the short-term is because we're already seeing renewable generation getting curtailed, particularly in California, and that will probably happen more often and in other places in the future unless / until consumption is incentivized at those times to mitigate it (though energy storage is part of the solution, too). There are many different ways that customers could be incentivized to use more energy when renewable generation is highest (I'm familiar with a few startups trying to do just that), but hydrogen generation is definitely an energy-intensive process that could become cost-effective with low electricity prices when renewable generation is highest.

To be sure, this won't be happening soon, but given the potential uses for hydrogen (freight transportation, shipping, and other systems that can't be electrified are also potential uses), I think it will definitely have a big role in the future.