OK Peter, we’ll examine a couple of your points in detail then use the EIA LCOE figures which you claimed above were more authoritative than Lazards v9,0.
Firstly the anti-correlation between European wind and solar. As long as the anti-correlation is reasonable it doesn’t have to be perfect. Well before 2030 personal transport is going to move to battery electric vehicles, and at least in Europe (because of the EU) there are likely to be standards for how the grid can communicate with EV’s to tell individual vehicles when to charge. For a maximum of the few hours when the sun is shining brightly (and the wind blowing), EV charging can be instructed to ramp up to absorb any excess and effectively change an imperfect anti-correlation between wind and solar into a near-perfect one.
Here is the chart from the Frauenhofer institute demonstrating a decent anti-correlation between German wind and solar generation :
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With the same nameplate capacity of wind and solar generation (which I am suggesting) which I believe to be 36 GW of each, you almost never hit 35GW for the combined total. In fact most of the time the total does not exceed 25GW. Bear in mind there are a lot of points smack on the x axis because there is zero solar generation at night, but on average more than 50% of the wind generation takes place at night.
In short the anti-correlation is pretty good, even before EV charging is used to load shift to ensure that it doesn’t matter that it is not perfect.
EIA figures are here – https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm .
For onshore wind and solar PV give CFs of 36% and 25%. So by providing nameplate capacity equal to the average demand over a year, we expect to save 61% of fuel on the CCGT generation which you believe has to be configured to match peak demand.
The fuel and other variable costs for Advanced combined cycle (best CCGT) without CCS are $53.6 / MWh out of a total LCOE of $72.6 / MWh, or 76% of the LCOE when CCGT runs at a CF of 85%.
So as soon as the LCOE cost of onshore wind and solar PV get below $53.6 / MWh then it will be cheaper to install up to the average demand nameplate capacity above of each. And you get up to 61 percent carbon abatement (compared with CCGT CO2 emissions) for nothing. Think of the grid you have left as completely powered by CCGT, but wind and solar installed alongside just save fuel costs which pays for their capital costs.
When will solar PV LCOE get below $53.6 / MWh? Well Lazards V9.0 says it is there already in a number of locations. The IEA (another of your favoured sources) believes the solar PV LCOE it will be around $15 / MWh or better by 2050. My guess is it will be below $53.6 / MWh somewhere between 2020 and 2025.
How about onshore wind LCOE below $53.6 / MWh? Again, Lazards V9.0 says it is there already in a number of locations. EIA shows a
2020 range by location of 65.6 to 81.6, so some locations are highly likely to get below $53.5 / MWh by 2025. I would go with that and guess that the majority of new onshore wind locations will be below %53.5 / MWh by 2030.
So getting the first 60% of CO2 emission out of a grid powered entirely by CCGT is relatively straightforward using EIA figures, and does not appear to cost anything by 2025 or 2030.
Getting the remaining 40% of CO2 emissions out of electricity generation by a cost-efficient method is a little more complex and might cost something, but we can only really get down to that if you accept this first step.
So you have what you said you wanted – “authoritative” EIA figures for LCOE and capacity factor for onshore wind and solar PV, plus the information as to why perfect anticorrelation between the two is not necessary. And it shows abatement of up to 60% of carbon costs nothing by 2030.
