>"It is starting to sink in that the world's heavy reliance on fossil fuels will only end once the alternatives become a lot cheaper and that this requires a much bigger research and development effort. The alternatives are still too expensive for widespread deployment. "

You're dead right on that. The alternatives are far too expensive for widespread deployment. Practitioners who understand the electricity system and understand the issues recognise it is highly unlikely that intermittent renewables will become economically viable at the scale required. Nuclear has enormous potential to reduce costs and emissions. However, most of the research focus needs to be on the social engineering aspects of it rather than on the technical. If we (initiated by US and IAEA) remove the impediments that are preventing the world from having low cost nuclear power, that's really all that needs to be done. No international agreements are needed. Appropriately deregulate the nuclear industry, and markets will then do what they do. There'll be no need for carbon pricing or renewable energy subsidies or GHG emissions monitoring or massive waste on bureaucracies or UN control, with international courts, international police forces, etc to deal with recalcitrant states,

The chart here shows that carbon pricing costs far more than the projected benefits for all this century and beyond: http://catallaxyfiles.com/2014/10/27/cross-post-peter-lang-why-the-world-will-not-agree-to-pricing-carbon-ii/
This is from the worlds most widely cited and accepted model of costs and benefits of GHG emissions, climate damages, emissions abatement, and carbon pricing.

Risible rubbish!
So we need R+D eh?
No doubt at enormous cost to someone, i.e, the as ever gullible tax paying public.
Why? Because change will only come with cheaper alternatives!
You don't say!
People who regularly contribute to OLO, will have bean bored out of their brains by my posts advocating just that, and with proven examples!
#1 cheaper than coal thorium, which if we're still stupidly lead. will be hastily dug up and sold for a pauper's bargain, and then used to hand all the low cost energy advantage to those we compete with, or keep and used here, to hand it to us; and given our currently know reserves, for at least the next thousand years.
Virtually carbon free, cheaper than coal, 50's technology, Thorium reactors are small, and don't suit national grids!
[Moreover, they produce far less waste, which is nowhere as toxic and is eminently suitable for long life space batteries.]
They do however suit micro grids, and rolled/trucked out as bolt on factory built modules, connected to micro grids, will power up industry, (industrial estates, aluminium/steel-mills/smelters/military bases/essential defense industries) and for less than half what they shell out now, but particularly if they're rolled out as government owned and operated public utilities.
Sorry paper shuffling energy barons, but the days of captive markets, and endless price gouging are over; (or they should be)along with the rivers of BS that virtually handed our energy market to you!!
But particularly if we're lead by Lee Kwan Yu type pragmatists! (just don't hold your breath)
T.B.C. Rhrosty

The Watermellons have held up alternative energy by decades by the multi-trillion waste of money on half-assed "Alternative Energy" systems.

Electricity is the ULTIMATE perishable good (effective batteries don't exist), not used and it is instantaniously lost, fish heads in a hot sun last longer.
What else would one expect from a Party whose chief credentials are Bugger Alls.

To achieve the same emission reductions would cost more than twice as much with renewables than with nuclear. Furthermore, there is a very high risk that renewables will not be able to do the job. They’ve not demonstrated they can anywhere in the world whereas, nuclear power has demonstrated it can – for example it’s been supplying over 75% of France’s electricity for 30 years and cut Frances emisisons intensity from electricity to about 15% of Germany’s and Denmark’s.

The CSIRO eFuture calculator provides one easy way to check for yourself. It uses cost and CO2 emissions inputs for each technology from the Australian Government Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics (BREE)'s ‘Australian Electricity Technology Assessment Report’ (AETA). However, the cost of additional transmission is not included; these are a significant additional cost for options with a high proportion of renewables.

To use the 'eFuture' calculator select the inputs from the pull down menu options then click ‘Build charts’; or select ‘Default scenario’. It calculates the least cost proportions of technologies to meet the demand profile to 2050. It produces charts for generation proportions, wholesale cost and retail price of electricity and total CO2 emissions.

Compare the default scenario with and without nuclear permitted

1) default scenario, central estimates (most likely values) for all inputs, nuclear not permitted, in 2050:
renewables supply about 40% of electricity,
wholesale cost of electricity (in 2013 $) = $130/MWh
CO2-e emissions from electricity = 80 Mt/a

2) With nuclear permitted and all else same as default scenario:
nuclear supplies about 60% of electricity,
wholesale cost of electricity (in 2013 $) = $80/MWh
CO2-e emissions from electricity = 25 Mt/a

Therefore, for these inputs the wholesale electricity cost is about 1.6 times higher with nuclear not permitted than with nuclear permitted. If renewables supplied 50% of the electricity, the wholesale cost would be around twice what it would be with nuclear permitted.

#2: Is biogas, produced onsite and stored in bladders, makes power available 24/7!
Scrubbed and fed into super silent ceramic fuel cells, this gas, (methane) Will not only power the average domicile, as well as creating a sizable surplus, and endless free hot water! But for virtually nothing, once the roll out costs are recovered.
An 80% energy coefficient and scales of economy will ensure just that; and that the related infrastructure costs the average family less than the cost of a median priced car!
And given necessary scales of economy/government involvement, that's doable as a thousand dollars a quarter, for just a single decade!?
[Conversely, a decade down the track and a thousand a quarter, would be vastly lower than the average energy burden by then!]
And very doable if the government/gas and oil/energy corporation, steps in as the very low cost financing entity.
Why, even a high rise or a small village or suburb, could be serviced by a SMELL FREE system, not a lot larger than a couple of cargo containers!
All of which could also be buried if convenient!
And located at the lowest possible flood free site, eliminating most of the pumps that might be required!
The waste products include thoroughly sanitized high carbon fertilizer rich in both phosphate and nitrates; plus recyclable water, eminently suitable for an endlessly sustainable algae based oil industry!
Which by the way, if scales of economy are included, could according to industry experts, reduce the cost of jet fuel and diesel, to as low as 44 cents a litre, retail!
The waste products from this industry suitable as endless cattle fodder; or used as the basis for an arable land free, source of material, that sustains an equally endless, petrol replacing ethanol industry!
The resulting sludge, still useful as sanitized fertilizer!
As one very wise PM said, you just can't lose in the energy business.
Which should at least enable patently pragmatic politicians to propose the reinstating of the gas and oil corporation, but for the different purpose of actually rolling out these very same alternatives!
T.B.C. Rhrosty.

Don't forget to add the Pixie dust to the Bullsh--.