His comments about the viability of PV are always to be understood to be about the insolation in the UK. Some people like to generalise from them to say PV can't work in Australia or North Africa.

His comments about scale are true, but also aren't entirely complete. You probably can't replace the entire economy we have with lower intensity sources of energy without also having to reduce energy consumption, is his key argument.

But, striking out the worst ones with the best ones we can invent is still interesting.

It's a good read, but it's not holy canon. Parts are contestable and parts are highly contextual and parts are conjecture. Actually.. that makes it quite like holy canon.