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How about a Kickstarter for buying coal plants and turning them off.

Then much of the country would go dark. It's great to be idealistic but you should try to understand the problem first.

How about a KickStarter so more people can use more solar in some small capacity, thus reducing our pull on the grid?

I'd prefer to put my money behind replacing coal plants with solar. Such as subsidies to solar suppliers for installing and running their plant, at least equivalent in scale to the subsidies offered to coal power plants through fuel rebates, special zoning to reduce land taxes, low rent for digging up the coal in the first place, and many more.

Coal power plants are baseload generators. So the simple answer is that this is only possible for 30-40% of the coal generation capacity. If you want the lights on at night, that is.

Nuclear, for example, can replace coal if we want it to.

Exactly. The first step for replacement is decommissioning existing coal plants.

As there's no (or little) political will to do this, the private sector (and specifically those that recognize the problem) can act directly.

And since it's the 21st century, it seems like Kickstarter is the way the private sector can do it.

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