Because solar isn't balanced and we haven't fixed the duck curve. We're burning obscene amounts of nat gas, petroleum, and even coal currently. Until those numbers are at-or-near zero, every ounce of renewable electricity needs to be offsetting dirty electricity.

Think when these plants would come online. Think when solar and storage will be up to speed on the grid. Skate to where the puck is going to be. Think in systems. To say no today because of current state today is irrational and ignores the data. Enough sunlight falls on the Earth within ~30-60 minutes to power all of humanity for a year, and an enormous global clean energy flywheel is coming up to speed (first solar, with batteries right behind).

Yea, this is nonsense.

I've been trying to advocate for slowing climate change since about 2000. I've been to enough city council meetings, and seen enough government promises simply abandoned to know that this is a deeply naive way to just "expect" the world to suddenly become rational.

Let's stop the actively bleeding artery that is actively killing us before we even start to worry some efficiency gains we could get by asking the surgeon to do two things at once.

This is the difference between an environmentalist and an "environmentalist."

We need to fix climate change now. Get to carbon neutral now. Literally nothing else matters much.

It’s not human rationality, it’s cold, hard economics (scoped to renewables and storage uptake). Climate change is already happening, and there is nothing you can do to stop it immediately, just as you will get killed stepping in front of a freight train. You can only build systems that can attempt to outrace it to slow it down (various efforts to achieve net zero in a domain), and then eventually reverse it (an efficient, scalable carbon sequestration solution to existing atmospheric carbon load, powered by clean energy) over the next ~100-150 years.

The more I read about plasma gasification, the more it seems entirely fine and beneficial. The infrastructure just seems fairly expensive.

I would prefer that focus and expense be used to target reducing GHG's in the short run.

A substantial portion of the duck curve problem is overproduction at no-peak hours. Plasma gasification can take that excess strain off the grid and put it to useful work, while even providing a by-product that you can burn in the event that all of your renewables are underperforming, reducing the risk of relying on renewables.

It is literally (part of) a solution to the problem you're bringing up.

I've read up, and you have a good point.

I mostly agree with you. However:

> Because solar isn't balanced and we haven't fixed the duck curve.

Well, landfill management is something you could (mostly) only run whenever you have excess (solar) power on the grid. So it's an excellent consumer for intermittent generators.

> Until those numbers are at-or-near zero, every ounce of renewable electricity needs to be offsetting dirty electricity.

That’s not realistic. You can and probably will have a complete excess of renewable energy on bright and windy days that is well beyond electrical demand, and at the same time rely on baseload power during still nights. Energy storage helps even things out, and plasma gasification is one possible way to store that energy.

The more I read about plasma gasification, the more it seems entirely fine and beneficial. The infrastructure just seems fairly expensive.