It’s been done - many times over. Over the lifetime of the plant, it works out to about 20 g CO2/kWh for concentrating solar thermal, 12 g/kWh for thin-film PV, 24 g/kWh for polycrystalline silicon - compared to almost 1,000 g/kWh for coal. So roughly 40-80-fold reduction in carbon intensity over the status quo.
