@nicholas

Here are some things to consider:

1. Everything is cleaner than coal, see chart in article below.
2. Everything is safer than coal, see chart in article below.
3. Gas is much better than coal on both counts, see chart in article below.
4. Electricity supply can be smoothed with variable pricing.
5. Electricity supply can be smoothed with non-battery storage such as off-river pumped hydro, sand gravity storage, thermal storage.
6. Electricity supply can be smoothed with grid improvements, locally and with interconnects.
7. Electricity demand can be cut with district heating e.g. from industrial and geothermal sources.
8. Electricity demand from FF can be cut with a carbon tax.

Literally everything is better than continued use of coal for base load electricity demand for decades as in that projection.

https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy