I have seen very cold days, with no wind at all, steam from factories going straight up. In fact it is quite common. At the same time there was up to 10" of snow on the ground not far away, and because the sun was very low in the sky the output from solar would have been very low. Such conditions are common in winter. The biggest buffoon who advocated solar and wind wad Mr. Salmond. Well, I suppose the hot air uttered in the Scottish Parliament is worth a few hundred watts.
WE need nuclear, long and short term, as it will work regardless of weather. Right now we need coal. How are we coping with several major coal fired plants closing, and no replacements?
But instead we will, after several bleak and miserable winters and possibly more than one government falling, have cheap, nasty gas fired generating plants and fracking, rushed in as emergency measures, once the winter death toll reaches a few hundreds of thousands.
The coal fired plants will not be mothballed in case of emergency. They will be destroyed as soon as they close, lest someone at a later date fires them up to deal with an emergency and thereby exposes the incompetence and deceit of government, and worse, the civil service.
And because private industry will never fund it, and governments, who know it is necessary are too scared to be seen to fund it, the fast breeder reactor, which can actually burn up long lived nuclear waste and convert it into lighter elements with much shorter half lives, thereby making inroads into the currently stored but valuable partly used nuclear fuel, will never happen. And, the thorium cycle has its uses, but that will never happen in the west. India has far too much thorium in places where it is a menace, like certain beaches. They at least will introduce the thorium cycle into serious sized powerplants.
We don't have leaders any more, just spineless idiots and malignant parasites.