is required. As long as the fossil-fuel plants are needed in order to balance the intermittency of renewables, they are going to be sub-optimal at best in terms of profitability. In private hands, that adds up to a powerful lobby which will militate against the public good.

So nationalise them.

Or is some sort of compulsory cross-ownership to be preferred? Regulation which would impose all fossil-fuel generators to also own an equivalent amount of renewable capacity? That might work. The market for wind parks in Germany seems fairly mature and liquid.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}