The energy storage is not a "do or die" issue for the industry by any extent.
Technical solutions for short term energy storage are known, and been used for decades. Were it economically sound, it would've been adopted already. In fact, it is being done when the need is genuine, just without much publicity.
People who spin this topic feel to me to be in the business of selling tech companies.
I don't think people are recognizing how hard it is to deeply decarbonize with intermittent energy sources, and so I have to disagree. I think this problem is too often brushed aside as a non-issue by renewable energy optimists.
However, everyone I know in the space looks at that challenge as opportunity rather than discouragement. It's not like we're going to hit high penetrations of intermittent renewables overnight. It's going to be a gradual ramp over years that allows us to also deploy complimentary systems to deal with the ever increasing intermittency. Piece-by-piece we will deploy flexibility technologies (DR, DERMS, storage, etc.) and move to new regulatory incentives and utility business models (performance-based ratemaking, etc.) that allow us to reach our 100% goals.
There's a ton of super smart people already working on the intermittency problem, and entire businesses are being built to solve it (disclosure: many of them use our platform). So I guess while I agree with your assessment of the level of difficulty, I don't agree with your level of despair. There's way too many smart engineers working in the space now for intermittency to be in impossible problem to solve.
I'm not despairing that it can't be done. I just think people who say it's a solved problem are undercutting the challenge, and hand-waving away serious problems with the 100% intermittent renewable route while proclaiming confidently that other massive low-carbon energy sources aren't desired or needed. Full disclosure: I'm a nuclear proponent.
I know we can decarbonize rapidly; it's been done at scale in small regional areas many times.