In historical terms, it took about 60 milion years to form this coal layers. Humanity will burn them in few centuries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous

From the point of view of energy. The conversion of solar energy into coal is very inefficient, tree need energy to reproduce, only a part of plant is converted into coal, other organisms consuming plant matter, etc.

Most international trade is already done electronicaly, so there would not much need to physicaly move gold.

Goverments don't like gold standard because they can't print gold.

"China, the world’s largest coal consumer, has domestic reserves of coal to last the next 50 years, according to annual reserves data from the Ministry of Natural Resources cited by Bloomberg.

At current rates of domestic production, China also has crude oil reserves that could last for at least 18 more years, according to the ministry"

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/China-Say...

https://www.mining.com/web/china-has-enough-coal-reserves-to...

https://vinodvsharma.com/top-15-biggest-gold-refineries-in-t...

https://watcher.guru/news/20-billion-oil-deals-paid-in-chine...

"China and Saudi Arabia Settle First Oil Trade Using Digital Yuan"

https://www.economywatch.com/china-and-saudi-arabia-settle-f...

"Many of the most damaging emails suggest the committee was actively trying to undermine Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign. Basically all of these examples came late in the primary -- after Hillary Clinton was clearly headed for victory -- but they belie the national party committee's stated neutrality in the race even at that late stage."

https://web.archive.org/web/20190630070810/https://www.washi...

https://speed2power.epri.com/demand-characteristics.html

I wrote software for monitoring and controling electric grids on country level and later software for controling nuclear power plants, I know a little bit about resiliency.

Physicaly, you can do 3X redundancy in electric generation and electric grid, as there are no physical laws against it, but such large infrastructure is expensive and you have to pay the CAPEX even if the infrastructure is almost never utilized. Also transporting electricity over large distances is really expensive, therefor only relative small amount of electricity can be transport in europe and future targets are modest.

"The EU has set an interconnection target of at least 15% by 2030 to encourage EU countries to interconnect their installed electricity production capacity. This means that each country should have electricity infrastructure in place that would allow it to import, from its neighbouring EU countries, an equivalent of at least 15% of the electricity production capacity on its territory."

https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/infrastructure/electricit...

https://pubs.rsc.org/ee/article-abstract/11/3/469/565531/Rel...

Someone has to pay for this, either customers or tax payers (through goverment subsidies) and Europe already has high electricity prices (when compared with China and US).

"The energy sector is one of the largest and most important sectors of the world economy. Accounting for 8%–10% of world GDP, it is second only to health care in size and is equally pervasive in scope"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/energy-...

You are right, PJM grid is coal, nuclear and gas dominated.

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-MIDA-PJM/live/fi...

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...

Lot of industry, especialy heavy industry, chemical plants are running 24/7.

For expensive night prices see electricity prices in Europe, expensive natural gas, coal power production with carbom tax.

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/live/fifteen_min...

Currently, economy of Japan (world biggest LNG importer) is hit hard by the events in Middle East. Because of this goverment starts maximum use of nuclear power policy.

https://www.nucnet.org/news/japan-council-adopts-policy-pack...

https://www.powermag.com/reactor-restart-rekindling-japans-n...

https://ieefa.org/resources/japans-diversified-lng-procureme...

24–48 months, but for a data center that has to run 24/7 you need to also build a gas power plant.

https://www.pvfarm.io/blog/utility-scale-solar-project-devel...

https://globalenergymonitor.org/research/betting-big-data-ce...

https://x.com/GrantChalmers/status/1422472474487263233

https://jmhpower.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-wind-t...

Three Mile Island

"2027 – Nuclear Regulatory Commission to decide whether to issue operating license to Constellation Energy, with the decision expected in May. If granted, Constellation expects to bring the reactor back online later in the year."

https://www.witf.org/2026/07/28/three-mile-island-reactor-re...

Michigan’s Palisades nuclear power plant

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/nuclear/americas-first-...

Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nextera-energy-partn...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Arnold_Energy_Center#Res...

Probably 1 GW solar power plant, together with 1 GW onshore wind and 1 GW of gas power plant. Then you have to also pay the natural gas to compensate for times of low solar + wind production. You can build battery storage to decrease the natural gas consumption, but how much battery storage do you have to build and how much can you reduce the natural gas consumption strongly depends latitude and local weather patterns.

https://solarbatteryatlas.electrotech-revolution.com/deploym...

So in 100% renewables Europe scenario, you have build multiples of renewable production in each region.

You build enough renewables in Western Europe to power the whole Europe, you build enough renewables in Central Europe to power the whole Europe and you build enough renewables in Eastern Europe to power the whole Europe and build electric grid to transfer 2/3s of electricity produced in each region into other regions.

Can it be done? Yes, but it will be very expensive.

Many renewable energy modelers often ignore realities and costs of physical electric grid and model whole continent as copper plate which can transfer infinite amount of electricity from each to point to any other point.

For more realistic scenarios German government is looking into power-to-gas energy storage systems, where you convert renewable electricity to hydrogen, ammonia or ethanol and store it underground. There are also plans to import large part of these gases/liquids from other countries, so no energy independence in the future.

https://www.bundeswirtschaftsministerium.de/Redaktion/EN/Pre...

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-revise-hydrogen...

No amount of wind turbines will generate electricity without wind, or to be more precise:

Cut-in speed: 3–4 m/s (12–15 km/h) to begin spinning and producing power.

Cut-out / Stop speed: Above 25 m/s (90 km/h) where brakes are applied to prevent mechanical damage

Germany has to have backups, currently quite expensive, for all this times of missing renewables production.

During day hours and with clear weather it's solar.

Currently at night in Germany it's: imports from other countries + coal power plants + gas power plants + little bit of hydro/biomass.

The plan for coming decade is to replace coal power plants with new subsidized gas power plants.

https://table.media/en/europe/news/gas-fired-power-plants-eu...