I mean, sure, but this is complementary to my point. It's true that its simply good economics in the sense that you get ahead of the competition in this industry. But the economic cost of pollution is also absolutely real and something which definitely weights into what is happening. Look at Beijing and it's pollution... it definitely costs billions in terms of health care. Add to that the cost of being sick in terms of manpower and productivity. There is literally no reason not to throw billions or trillions or any amount of money at alternative energy sources. it's just good business.China's decision to move to solar is more economic, than pollution. Solar panels need labor for manufacturing and can ship out finished products while they cannot do the same with fossil fuels. So that answers why China gives a shit. Its jobs, money and monopoly. And its working, they are primarily the main manufacturers of solar panels and constitute to 55% of the global solar power manufacturing. This is successful because, its the economics add up. Government got behind R&D, poured in money and that created jobs, money and a strong industry. And of course, solar panels have an overall carbon footprint 20 times lower than that of coal, and natural gas by fracking although cleaner, its only marginal and isnt nearly anywhere close to the numbers of solar. So while the government must look to phase it out, its really important to tie it with an economically viable option.
So Biden's decision to not include frackign was the right thing, but it must be complimented with strong incentives for renewable energies.
The point is cost. Wind is the most efficient, but is intermittent. Solar isnt available all the time so both of these will require a method to store the energy in the form of batteries, and chemical batteries of any type will be bad for the environment. Solar and wind are known to have drastic effects to wildlife. Is the target of better planet only for humans? Its not.
And the other problem with renewable energy is location. You will have to find an area which provides good source of sunlight / wind etc which would be remote. Then additional effort for transmission of that power will bring up additional cost, whereas nuclear can reutilize existing thermal plants with minimum construction. The power lines will stay and thereby provide the best.
I dont think nuclear fusion is close, but the current fission based sources are already very efficient.
Batteries are not really an option. Not only because they are ridiculously pollutant but also because they are absurdly big and expensive. We just don't have any means of storing large amounts of energy in any reasonable or possible way. Unless someone decides that building a city size battery to power a city for a few hours at a time is reasonable.
It's not. To my understanding we could be 40-60-100 years away from it. But storing energy is cartoonishly unviable and solar panels would have to be practically magic so we might as well be closer to fusion, which according to the scientific community the science checks out and fusion materials would be abundant and the process would produce much less waste.