Nuclear or natural gas are part of the 30-year energy future...

Nuclear or natural gas are part of the 30-year energy future because of this simple issue: What happens to a major city if the sun doesnt shine for a week, or the wind doesnt blow? Or even with hydro power, what if a region experiences a megadrought for 10, 20 years? In the united states, two of the biggest hydropower plants risk being unable to generate electricity due to a megadrought (lake mead and lake powell). Imagine that; lake mead, which generates enough electricity for 10 million americans, may turn off in the next 10 years if the US cannot figure out how to regulate the declining water supply of the colorado river!

Batteries may one day be so amazingly huge that we can store 1 month's worth of electricity of a city. That will be an impressive engineering feat and a wonderful day for humanity. It is not happening soon though.

However, the argument that solar is a bad source of energy is also poor. For example, Phoenix arizona typically has surge pricing in electricity between 3pm-7pm; the hottest part of the day due to a merciless sun, and high ambient temperatures (45C-50C!). And yet, only 8% of the state's electric is powered by solar. In Arizona, a state whose major population centers experience an average 299 sunny days per year! Solar power can be found on top of perhaps 1 in 15 houses, IF THAT. This does not include the sadly numerous mobile home parks, and apartments of the city. Phoenix experiences peak power needs exactly correlated with when the sun is shining. There are many places in the world where solar is heavily under-utilized, and it would help moderate surge demands due to high heat.

During the lifespan of the equipment (30+yr) we need to figure out how to recycle old cells into new cells more efficiently, but it can be done. In the long term, our battery tech needs to improve by several orders of magnitude. Technological advances are not the depressing part of living on this planet. The hard part is getting the ignorant, recalcitrant 50+% of humans on board with change.

Thankfully, Talga looks to be part of the energy future. If Talga can supply cheap batteries in vast quantities, the world will find a use for them.