I’m a bit tired of the ignorance-based questions being asked on Quora, but I can’t and don’t fault media-based ignorance. But,if I don’t illuminate Fundamental Truths, How will people learn.

Quora? Are there any alternative solutions that could have been considered instead of building a gas-fired backup power plant?

NO!

And that answer is provided by my 35 years in the gas and alternative energy businesses.

Having started Alternative Resource Company in 1986, I’ve examined this space deeply. The company name was shortened to Altresco, which designed the complex business model required to accomplish that goal.
The detailed business structure and formulas for “orchestration” of the 24 stakeholders in a way that stayed sustainably and transparently beneficial to all parties. (However, it’s stayed mysterious to all but Altresco and me since.)

But we also had to develop a natural gas-fired cogeneration facility that did yield the emission-free waste heat we used to replace all combustion of dirty oil at the industrial.
But to clear the skies for a much bigger area, we had to open the natural gas gate from Canada, which shipped us enough otherwise wasted (flared) gas to replace all oil burning in the region.

The bottom line of this message is that natural gas is the only fuel that we could use to provide both reliable emissions-free heat to the industrial and electricity generation to the grid was to use the newly available natural gas.

By substituting emissions-free heat to replace the 200,000 BBls of dirty ship oil the giant industrial complex had been burning for 45 years. The skies of Western Massachusetts became very clear blue.

By 2007, all of the clean natural gas in North America had nearly been used up. Only fracking has kept ample natural gas supplies available, and we need to be grateful that we can generate reliable natural gas electricity.

Getting back to the question. The only way to provide affordable and reliable electricity for the last four decades has been using the cleanest coal generators and nuclear energy whenever possible.

However, neither coal nor nuclear-generating plants are flexible enough to work with intermittent renewable electricity. The only option for retaining reliability while integrating growing renewable electricity has been to find equipment that can ramp up and down quickly.
The only equipment that can provide that flexible reliability is gas-fired generation.

And, before 2007, there was not enough gas in the US to fill the gaps left by retiring coal or nuclear plants.

So, the newly available natural gas is needed to maintain grid reliability without the hulking coal and nuclear plants is natural gas-fired generation. We are fortunate in North America to have the massive new natural gas supplies that fracking provides.