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> gas backup for such scenarios (which are relatively rare, and during which renewables will still operate at some non-100% fraction of the required energy)

Now you have built two energy systems and one of them has to be on standby and ready to be used only rarely. Cross your fingers and hope everything still works. You also have to maintain long term storage of gas, staff that knows how everything operates, etc.

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> Now you have built two energy systems and one of them has to be on standby and ready to be used only rarely. Cross your fingers and hope everything still works. You also have to maintain long term storage of gas, staff that knows how everything operates, etc.

Well yes, except that the backup system happens to be already built. There's definitely a maintenance cost associated with this, and long-term (beyond the lifetime of existing stations) this wouldn't make any sense. But in the short-term the costs associated with this are relatively low.

It seems disingenuous to talk about "short-term" costs when we are talking about grid-scale energy systems. It is the long-term costs that are important when evaluating capital intensive systems.

That seems to be less the case if one is evaluating continuing to use existing systems for which the up front capital costs have mostly already been paid.

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