An additional 64 GW of nuclear is a large underestimation, especially if gas-pebble-bed generation proceeds as expected. Nuclear would completely trump inefficient and overly expensive wind, and doesn't require replication to boot, which boosts the actually costs of wind even more, although never admitted by wind proponents, who live in a dream world. Those West VA mountaintops and the flying wildlife would be better off with coal mines than with useless wind turbines. could    Solar tower looks to be the most efficient solar for quite some time to come, perhaps forever. Wave will eventually exceed
wind power due to huge advantage in  power density - i.e. water contains 800 times the energy of wind.

Bear in mind that the purpose of this report is not to make a recommendation, but to direct federal dollars.  If it's coming anyway, it arguably doesn't need EPRI singing it's praises.

But the report is so bizarrely recursive that I barely know where to begin.  I too have heard good things about next generation nuclear technologies, but even if we solved all the political problems with nuclear today, we'd still be a decade away from the next MW of nuke capacity given construction times. Meantime, we've gotta do something on carbon.

But the bigger bit of recursion is the implied cost.  The most conservative estimates I've seen for the cost of coal-fired power that is both compliant with the Clean Air Act (as all new coal must) AND can sequester carbon (as all new coal probably will have to be, although no one's placing bets yet on precisely when or how) is an all-in, delivered cost of around 16 cents/kWh.  In other words, the days of cheap coal are over.  And if it's not cheap, why the heck are we doing it?  And even if there are good reasons for expensive coal (national security, say), then you still have to explain how it is that a grid with 16 cent baseload power (surely we're not talking about running big, thermally-intensive coal plants as peakers?) doesn't have a massive economic incentive for a greater deployment of renewables, efficiency, nuclear, gas and local generation than they postulate.

So even in the bizarro universe where EPRI's assumptions make sense, they are internally incoherent.  And yet, they have framed this as a strawman upon which we should start deploying research and subsidy dollars.  

This makes no more sense than it would to subsidize R&D in dentures and steel toed boots because both will be required in a world where you want me to kick you in the teeth.  Idiotic underlying assumptions, no internal coherence... and yet it is being trumped as a smart policy idea.  

Several comments:

Notwithstanding whether or not carbon + biomass cofiring + coal sequestration is a good thing, that's not what EPRI is recommending.  Just coal + sequestration.

It is utterly crazy to recommend a technology path that will massively drive up the price of electricity simply because other more competitive carbon reduction strategies aren't competitive with current prices of electricity.  If you - or anyone else - wants to do coal + biomass + carbon sequestration, that's fine.  But unless you get the public to guarantee your cost recovery, you'll never get any investors, because as soon as the electric prices rises in response to your operating costs, lots of other low/zero carbon technologies will come on line, outcompete you and force you to shut your plant down (or, more likely, take a massive haircut on the equity so that you can just recovery marginal costs and pay off your debt.)

This latter point is crucial to understand, because EPRI's recommendation isn't founded in any reasonable consideration of policy or economics.  It is a request to get governments to guarantee stupid ideas - but dressed up in the guise of rational technology assessment, which it ain't.  

Put this another way: if we're going to accept 15+ cent/kWh power, wouldn't we rather have the gov't say that they'll pay that to anyone who can lower carbon rather than simply throwing it at coal?  Because if coal isn't cheap (as future coal most certainly isn't without a complete roll back of the Clean Air Act), then what's the point?

so are a lot of other carbon-control approaches.  Maybe we are in violent agreement here, at least with respect to your second point about biomass.  But doing CCS with coal simply because we'd rather not fund cheaper ways to reduce carbon is still dumb.

The gist is that we CAN'T need more coal if we do things right.
The biggest criticism of the EPRI study is its findings of how fast we can implement nuclear power.
If you believe we can do more efficiency than 1.1 percent, say how it is possible.
Most of the increase in power needs in the EPRI study come from the PHEVs.
We are solving our liquid carbon problem, and substituting for nuclear and advanced coal.
But, I am running a theme here.
It is not our coal.
It is not our oil.
It is owned before it comes out of the ground by folks who have bought the future rights to it.
It will me mined and shipped SOMEWHERE.
It will be burned either as CLEAN as we can, or as DIRTY as they can.
Those are the real choices.
We need carbon CCS solutions as soon as possible.
And,  IF , the world economy continues to grow, at the level assumed in the EPRI forecast, then we will need more coal.