steam power

Not the alternative we're looking for:

"With wood you get half the amount of energy typically than with conventional fossil fuels." Mitchell says it'll take at least 100 years for everything to equal out. "You're going to be doing more harm than good than if you were to just be using fossil fuels."

I could argue that (most) wood contains far fewer toxins and heavy metals than coal, but none of these are the proper questions. The proper question is: "Why are we still relying on steam to generate our power?" Which includes nuclear power, by the way. It's just a fancy (dangerous) steam engine. This is what we need: