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Raw renewables capacity (nameplate IIRC, possibly w/ capacity factor applied) is on the order of fossil costs (though those are grossly understated by the market), but storable and dispatchable renewables / sustainable solutions aren't. The cost of stored energy is far higher than of nondispatchable wind and solar.

This matters not only for grid power but for off-grid energy needs, ranging from chainsaws to backup generators to marine and aviation fuel.

> propaganda has convinced large numbers of people that solar, wind, efficiency and demand manangement are the domain of idealistic tree huggers and/or parasitic boondoggles rather than a pragmatic and cost effective solution.

The problem is that renewable energy is very capital intensive. Without some kind of price fixing (thank you tree huggers) it is excessively risky. When you have price fixing it is very attractive to speculators who make unpopular profits from electricity bills.

The best way to make money is to already own a big power station and not bother reinvesting or maintaining existing capacity (coal). You reach a situation where no one has any incentive to build anything unless they are heavily subsidised. The public are stuck renting ever more expensive energy whilst funding massive building projects that they will never own.

Electrical grids are capital intensive anyway, one of solar and winds big advantages is how non-capital intensive it is compared with the competition, that's why it's making up such a large share of newly built generation capacity across the globe.

As you say in places where demand isn't growing quickly, it's more about shutting down and replacing existing plants, and that's where it can get political, see the "war on coal" in the US. But even there, it's an economic no-brainer to shut the coal plants that are killing people and replace them with gas and renewable, the only thing stopping it from happening is politics, not anything inherent in renewable tech.

>but there's absolutely no need for Bill Gates to be talking down the existing solutions that are clearly better than coal in order to promote his own speculative investments.

I'm lost, where is he talking down existing solutions and what are his speculative investments you're talking about?

Some background reading:

http://energytransition.de/2015/08/we-are-good-to-go/