Sorry for the cliché. But I can only reply that Rome was not built in a day.

Look how far we´ve come with CO2 emissions in the US since 1990. I have many concerns that are similar to yours. One that you left out is that the gas industry has emitted copious amounts of methane in its drilling, production, transport operations. The amount negates a portion of the gains in total GHG emissions in that time period.

We may be better served if you took more time to put the gas industry in order before telling us that the task to decarbonize is an impossible one.

Look at the growth in renewables over time.

U.S. Renewable Energy Will Surge Past Coal and Nuclear by Year´s End.

Wind, solar and hydropower will generate more than 20 percent of the power supply\"

And here:

\"...the United States went from producing 125,820 gigawatt-hours of wind and solar electricity in 2011 to 470,141 gigawatt-hours in 2020. Geothermal generation stayed largely constant and, as of 2020, stood at a relatively low 16,930 GWh.

Solar generation grew particularly quickly, with the report finding a 23-fold increase since 2011. Wind, which started at a higher percentage than solar, saw an almost threefold increase. Three states — Iowa, North Dakota and Kansas — now produce at least half the amount of electricity they consume from wind and solar.\"

In the interest of full disclosure, I am also retired from the Oil&Gas Industry. It is amazing to me that so much has happened in the last few years in the energy industry.

It is ironic that the most widespread and destructive energy system failure in the US in recent years occurred in Texas and, according to FERC:

\"These recommendations, similar to the ones FERC issued in the aftermath of the 2011 Texas blackouts, would require power plants and natural gas producers to protect critical equipment from freezing temperatures, to update power generators that experience freeze-related outages and provide compensation for generators to recoup weatherization costs.\"

But, to be charitable, the gas industry is also on a learning curve.

I have no crystal ball to tell me the future of utility scale battery power storage, which is still in its infancy. The EIA says this:

I suggest that insisting that we know everything about our energy future before we depart from our present carbon intensive situation is akin to insisting in 1980 that we know everything about the future of information technology before we use, much less, buy a personal computer.

I have no doubt that storage and back-up options that may or may not include pumped hydro, batteries, hydrogen, small nuclear, massive offshore wind and mixtures of all of them, will be clearer in the next few years.

Or should we just \"play it safe\" and stay with gas? Perhaps your agenda is similar to that of The Texas Public Policy Foundation who say:

“Today, I’m thankful to live a high-carbon lifestyle and wish the rest of the world could too”

Finally, perhaps we can agree:

Trying to predict the future is a mug’s game. But increasingly it’s a game we all have to play because the world is changing so fast, and we need to have some sort of idea of what the future’s actually going to be like because we are going to have to live there, probably next week.”

— Douglas Adams, “The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time” (2002)

The Manhattan Contrarian Energy Storage Paper Has Arrived!