As NZer, one of the huge issues with have with hydro is that the capacity varies, and due to environmental regulations we don't have enough fossil backup. As a consequence, in winter there is a period where everyone prays for rain, and if there isn't enough of it, the lights go out and the country incurs hundreds of millions of dollars in costs due to lost productivity.

There is a "loss" that comes from building a natural gas AND electricity infrastructure, instead of just one or the other. It's easier to go from electricity to heat, instead of natural gas to electricity.

Yes, I am a molecular biologist by training. This won't work. The reason genetic engineering is carried out in labs is because it requires expert knowledge of protocols, and expensive equipment. In TFA, one of the people interviewed is trying to insert a targeted florescent marker, and struggling. This is fairly trivial to do in the lab, but only with good understanding of basic principles, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gear and consumables, and tested/documented protocols. You can't build a space shuttle in your backyard, neither can you successfully build a recombinant bacterium that meets spec in your garage. Just because cells are squishy does not make this equivalent to software development!