OTOH, wind and solar can reduce emissions by 70% and save money over the long term while doing so. Wind + solar + short term storage can reduce emissions by 99% and save money over the long term while doing so.
Getting from 99% to 100% will be hard and will require likely either long term storage or carbon capture, which will be expensive. But don't let that get in the way of getting to 99%.
PS. I live in Finland, our electricity is already mostly clean, in large parts thanks to nuclear. Next we will need to clean up heating and industry, probably with a combination of electrification (heat pumps), storage (heat storage, hydrogen), renewables and nuclear.
A decade is very feasible for the electricity generation part of the problem, which is what I was referring to.
Other industries may take longer.
Legit question too. I know we have a bunch of nascent tech, but haven't heard of anything at scale.
Short term storage is batteries.
I called long term storage "expensive" and implied that it's the 3rd step so into the future, so that opens up the options for nascent tech.
Note that you don't need much of a slope to do pumped hydro. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power...
There seems to be an obvious contradiction extant in the markets....
Meanwhile California adds about 5 gigawatts of solar power every year.
That's why solutions like EVs and wind+solar win: their success is not conditioned on an impossible fact. Instead, wins can be incremental and progressive. You can put one EV on the road, and then two, and then more. You can put a few windmills in one place and more in another. It doesn't require you to convince everyone.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future