I work in the smart grid industry, and have watched and studied several years of the Stanford Energy Seminars [1]. I totally agree that Solar/Wind are the future - but we know how to supply our electrical needs with Coal (and Natural gas in part of the United States) and Nuclear power today. It's going to take 20+ years to transition to a Wind/Solar future, so the real question is not whether we should transition to wind/solar (we should) - but what do we invest our resources in while we transition to that future? Do we build (A) More coal plants or (B) More nuclear plants. (Throw in the curveball (C) start fracking more and exporting natural gas - which comes with it's own environmental costs)
I've just spent the last two weeks in the UK working on various Low Carbon smart grid projects, and the challenges of Distributed Generation (mostly wind right now in the UK) are significant - the large one being building the Transmission/Distribution network to handle this somewhat erratic source of power.
So - the future is clear, but the journey is still in question. I vote nuclear power - The impact to future generations of carefully buried waste will be much, much less than the impact of global warming.
I've just spent the last two weeks in the UK working on various Low Carbon smart grid projects, and the challenges of Distributed Generation (mostly wind right now in the UK) are significant - the large one being building the Transmission/Distribution network to handle this somewhat erratic source of power.
So - the future is clear, but the journey is still in question. I vote nuclear power - The impact to future generations of carefully buried waste will be much, much less than the impact of global warming.
[1] http://energyseminar.stanford.edu/event-archive