We will need more wind and solar than required for load to cover cloudy and calm days. I have seen 3x to 5x overcapacity. This should be cheaper than long-term storage, at least with current storage prices, and better to have more power than storage. The result is there will be extra capacity for running intermittent stuff like capture.

I haven't seen anyone address how we will pay for carbon capture. By the time we start doing real capture, the CO2 produced should be low so carbon tax will be low.

> We will need more wind and solar than required for load to cover cloudy and calm days. I have seen 3x to 5x overcapacity.

The theory being that power would be essentially free most of the time because there would be a surplus. But then wouldn't people just use more? It's only "free" until people come up with other uses for inconsistently available large amounts of power, at which point you have to outbid them.

This assumes that what people pay for power is determined by how much it costs to produce. That's already not the case in most countries. Energy prices are determined by taxes and subsidies.

You can install renewable energy at home. If it's cheap enough to overbuild by 3-5x and the grid is overcharging for it then people will do that instead, and then the grid ceases to operate in most places. There is a non-trivial possibility of that happening regardless if storage gets cheap enough, because local generation and storage would remove the cost of distribution and outcompete the grid.

But also, that's crazy. You have the chance to offer the world cheap renewable energy and you're going to not? What kind of misanthropic policy is that?

Paying for carbon capture is big problem since there is no profit and needs to be done collectively.

One option would be taxing energy. The carbon tax would be small by that time. That would also keep the price higher.

I had idea for retroactive carbon tax, making people pay for their past consumption. Those of us that are older got lots of benefit from polluting CO2, and makes sense to have us pay to remove it. The feasibility depends on the price, and how to charge lots of people who are retired.

> One option would be taxing energy. The carbon tax would be small by that time. That would also keep the price higher.

Taxing energy, carbon or otherwise, is highly regressive. It only works if you refund the money. Otherwise people freeze to death or go broke.

Taxing non-carbon energy makes no sense because you're not trying to discourage it. You might as well just use income tax.

> I had idea for retroactive carbon tax, making people pay for their past consumption.

The records to use for this are unavailable. Nobody knows how much gasoline someone bought in 1995. It would also generally be impossible to collect; what if your contribution for 75 years of carbon emissions was meant to be $250,000 and you only have $100,000? Do we take your last dime and leave you to starve? What about people who are already dead? Do their kids have to pay?

Retroactive taxes and taxes on retirees are both going to be intensely unpopular.

Which is why people want to justify it by claiming we're going to have a lot of surplus energy to use for it. But how does that work unless the competing demand for energy is negligible, which seems implausible?

Every part of it seems like some company trying to extract government money for their inefficient solution that costs more than it would to reduce emissions by the same amount.