Winner Takes All

Mutually exclusive. That appears sometime to be the stance unconsciously taken by the champion of any particular energy sources. That leads to arguments for and against, and which one is better, that in the end put off even those who are sitting on the fence. It is as if one energy source can satisfy the need in totality. It is just not possible. Even China is targeting only 4% nuclear by 2020, what about the remaining 96%. Coal, may be clean coal, solar, and other sources still have to chip in.
Of course, in large scale deployment of renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and wave the standards and practices in the usage of conventional energy sources cannot be adopted. Footprint for footprint, definitely solar panels cannot generate the amount of energy that could be generated by say a nuclear power plant. Thus, the application of solar, if it is to make contribution to total energy requirement should follow a different path altogether. The concept of centralized generation with distribution lines fanning out of the power plant is not suitable. Distributed generation could be a workable concept, but how could that be done?