There seems to be a lot of focus on needing a “zero emission baseload” especially by those who then advocate nuclear power.
These words do not automatically have to be coupled to solve our problem. For example you can have low emission baseload and zero emission renewables.
Until about 2040 or 2050 (depending on which projections you accept) we only need to aim for an 80% reduction in emissions not 100%.
Baseload is somewhere around 35%-40% of peak load. If we remove coal-fired power and replace/retrofit for 40% gas-fired power we reduce emissions to half or less of that from coal-fired power.
That is using gas-fired power reduces baseload emissions to 20% (or less for combined cycle gas) of current levels. Gas turbine power plants only take a few years to design and build.
The rest can then be more easily met by 60% of power from renewables. Over the next 30 years to 2040 we could aim for a modest increase of 2% renewables per year (thus 20% by 2020 40% by 2030 etc) and we will reach the desired target.
It is absolutely NOT necessary to aim for zero emission baseload as a starting point. That would be massively over-constraining the problem in order to achieve a hidden agenda solution namely nuclear. It would not be the lowest cost trajectory or even the fastest trajectory to low emissions.
Compare emissions/capita of countries that do use majority gas-fired power rather than coal-fired power. Some of the EU countries (excluding France) which use North Sea gas are a good place to start. Compare them with Australia which is using mainly coal-fired power. Those countries have about half the emissions/capita of Australia.