Yes with nuclear.

The lower waste CANDU reactors are available and the very low waste thorium reactors will be available in a decade.

Howwever with the greens we can, but probably won't, and will continue on the limp wristed approach to pollute for decades.

We have a choice muck up our planet by using coal/oil/gas or adapt to using electricity when it is available.
If we start now with 'innovation' and produce items that work when the sun shines and forget about storage and base loads.
At least then we can reserve our fuel for essentials, hospitals etc.
We have to change our life style it cannot continue as it is.

there are currently 2 excellent ways of storing power, which don't involve using non renewable resources. The first is Hydro electric; using surplus power to pump water up hill to high storage reservoirs. The second is compressed air. Both very simple, very cheap and no nasty side effects.

I can't take Martin Nicholson's article seriously. Of course we can ditch coal, we have to ditch coal and we mostly will. Doing so will be far more beneficial to future prosperity than not doing so despite short term energy cost increases. Will we do it in time to save the Great Barrier Reef? I'm doubting it. SE Australian agriculture? I'm seriously worried for that too. The author doesn't even mention such costs and consequences of the acceleration of emissions that he appears to be advocating. Changing will be hard and expensive so don't bother? I think that he exaggerates the costs and difficulties of renewables. As well I think he overestimates the opposition to nuclear in Australia. I believe we can get by without and not end up impoverished but mainstream Australia may well choose to use some nuclear if it guarantees the coal plants get shut down. We may be less extravagantly wasteful of energy but we aren't headed for the dark ages by going low emissions.
Only someone who refuses to accept the real costs of using coal and urgent necessity to drastically reduce it's use could write an article like this.

I just want to add that switching to gas is a policy that will fail to deliver the reductions in emmissions needed, merely setting a limit to reductions of at best 20 or 30% - ie to fail on climate change. That's if it's taken up seriously and replaces existing coal plants, which it won't be and won't, not by those proposing it or by anyone serious about climate change - who aren't proposing it. It could only ever be stopgap backup for renewables and even that's debatable, never a solution and the window of opportunity for gas to be a stopgap has already passed. The author's passing mention as if it were given that it was a viable option is jsut more evidence that he doesn't take climate change seriously or really see any need to reduce emissions at all.

Amongst power engineers it is well known that having power when you need it is far more important than volume, and that the largest most efficient systems are slow to ramp up and down.

This is why the base loads have typically been coal and the peak load supplies have been the relatively nimble gas generators.

The difference in price paid for peak power vs base load is about 10 to 30x.

The renewable technologies either don't generate at peak periods, or are extremely unreliable. The peak times are typically 6-8 am and 5-10pm.

Obviously solar doesn't feature then, wind cannot be relied on, and other technologies that are being touted are far from economical yet.

The answer is obviously to have storage, but 3 major criteria have to be met to make it feasible:

1 - it has to be relatively inexpensive to build,
2 - it needs to be store and regenerate the power efficiently,
3 - it needs to be able to operate many times without degradation.

Hydo plants such as the Snowy scheme fit the bill well, in that for the huge capacity, the dams and pump stations are relatively cheap, the power out over power in is about 50% and the system is almost infinitely repeatable. However, the shortage of mountains and water makes expansion of this unlikely.

Compressed air is slightly more expensive but would seem to be similar but has low efficiency as the power out / power in is only in the order of 10%

Batteries are suitable only for vehicles.

Liquid salt combined with solar power is the most promising, as it stores heat prior to generation, and is viable (under very heavy incentive schemes) for larger plants. Unfortunately as solar only generates for about 6hrs per day, the storage has to be much larger for relatively small generation capacity.

There is a huge way to go before we can replace coal with renewable energy. The next few decades will probably see nuclear become more acceptable as the ETS makes power far more expensive.