The Oil Drum

True only because we do heating by, surprise, burning oil or gas, and in about the least efficient way possible. Basically, we make heat at about 2,000+ degrees within a furnace, and then dilute it down to 72F in a house, wasting the vast majority of the useful work that the fuel can accomplish. Heat pumps are better, but then there we are. Peak heating is in the dead of night, in winter, exactly when there isn't much solar.

Of course, something like this waste conversion could help immensely with that problem. By turning waste streams into fuel that can be stored until needed, the difficulties are dramatically reduced, just use solar when the sun shines, burn your fuel when it doesn't.

Even then, it'll work, but I"m not sure it's that ideal. Fuel shortages would be a chronic problem, as we'd probably want to use at least 30% of our energy when the sun isn't shining. Given that around 10% of the planet currently lives comfortably, and we will either run low on fuel, or be unable to use it due to GW, we will either need to be making less than (say...) 10% of our energy from carbon based sources, or convince 90% of the planet that they should stay poor, I vote for the former.

If only we had something that could generate baseline power continuously, all the time, and use it for something like 40-50% of our energy needs. Something like, say, nuclear?

Certainly solar would be helpful, but doesn't it seem strange that we're spending immense sums of money, and betting the farm on new technologies that should come out of the lab "in a few years" just so that by 2030 we can be where France was in 1985 using (at the time) 30 year old technology.