And what happens when you get a year like 2016 when it was less sunny and less windy?
I suspect they burn more coal since that is what they do. France will just continue to use its nuclear power without worrying about emissions.
But it does worry about emissions: Paris, for one, is a city regularly at danger levels of pollution and diesel is (or is about to be) banned from some cities. There may or may not be immediate pollution from nuclear plants, but I am far from convinced about its relative safety in the grander scheme of things. There is never something for nothing, not even lunches. Hell, it's the first law of physics!
Parts of the UK have over thirty-foot tidal rises/falls. The Bay of Biscay has amazing storms and waves. That energy can be harnessed, when there is a will. As with the rest of the alternatives to the unsustainable status quo, people with different beliefs cite costs today, without drawing any comparison with the alternative, future costs which are going to be far greater than monetary ones. Spending what sounds like a lot of money today to secure a future - a viable future where we can live on the surface of Earth rather than copy the mole, is still a more sensible bet than opting for cheaper today, the hell with tomorrow and future generations. I
care about them: they are me.
There are no such tides in the Mediterranean; indeed, it has been shown that the Straits of Gibraltar have silted up in the past, leading to the the Med drying out: the proof has been found in the sediments. That said, there are deserts in many of its bordering countries, deserts of no use to man other than for the exploitation thereof for energy-producing farms. China has done a lot of this already, and not because it sees coal as its sustainable future - more as its suicide. The Chinese have never been fools.
If there is going to be anything that will scare the politicians into cooperation, it's going to be mutual survival. I am sure that, sooner or later, the world will be split into zones that produce different, exclusive products for worldwide distribution. Drive through France, fly over much of Britain, and you see lands that are very fertile, better used producing food than cars or tractors: do the same on your way to Nairobi and another truth hits you in the face. Frankly, without looking at the world's bigger picture rather than focussing on the national political and religious, there appears to be little chance of any worthwhile future. There is no need for each tiny country to try to be self-sufficient in all aspects; better to get real and combine across the world than try to dominate. Nobody can; sooner or later all empires crumble.
The thing is, those who still champion fossil fuels never try to explain what happens to all those escaping pollutants. Yes, some carbon falls back down and may be absorbed by the remaining jungles; where do they imagine the lighter than air gasses go? They can't escape gravity even though they may not sink down into more dense air and down to the ground. All they can do is gather as different layers of toxic cloud. Has everyone forgotten about acid rain, and what it has done to bits of Scandinavia in the past? Much of northern Scotland is apparently what passes for photographic heaven for some people. Do they know that they are looking at a moorland that used to be forest, as it still would be but for our pollutants over the years?