You've omitted key points.
Whether building more natgas plants is "necessary" depends on what category of need you are evaluating it by. Let's try and isolate them.
First is technical capability to integrate renewables. We have more than enough existing capacity to do the job. There may be a trend towards building more small, distributed combined cycle plants going forward, but that would be in response to decreased demand on larger units...
Second is the need of natural gas as an industry to increase profits. We can both agree that this is not, on its face, a reason to go along with deploying more natural gas plants.
However, what about the need to shut down large-scale thermal? We are both witness to "the titanic struggle that coal and nuclear wage" because "the encroachment of renewables is an almost immediate existential crisis because they (large scale thermal plants) can only recoup their capital and operating costs by operating almost constantly".
We have been trying to shut down coal plants for decades and we are only now starting to see some progress. That progress would not be possible so soon without the economic impact of natural gas augmenting the increasing supply of renewables.
When we replace coal electricity with natural gas we get a reduction in emissions; and when we figure that renewables increasingly reduce the emissions of the natural gas replacement then we obviously achieve even greater reductions relative to the original coal. As I wrote, "because of their low capital cost and relatively high fuel costs they (natural gas plants) also are easier to economically displace as more and more renewables come online".
This is a crucial difference that can't be overlooked. There is a natural economic progression for eliminating any natural gas capacity we build to replace coal with.
That sounds like happy and smiling lagomorphs all around to me. Or do you see an error in the reasoning?
Natural gas plants make it technologically far easier to integrate large amounts of variable energy sources like wind and solar, and, because of their low capital cost and relatively high fuel costs they also are easier to economically displace as more and more renewables come online. Their relatively small capital investment is far easier to work out with a renewable induced decline in market share because there is a related steadily escalating value in the ability to ramp up and down quickly. This will assure increased per MWH revenue even as the number of MWH generated declines.
In other words they phase out without even a whimper, much less the titanic struggle that coal and nuclear wage. For them, the encroachment of renewables is an almost immediate existential crisis because they can only recoup their capital and operating costs by operating almost constantly. If they lose 25% market share it is nearly impossible for them to raise the price of the power they sell into the remaining 75% enough to make up for the revenue lost.
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