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Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

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Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

#41

Post by messe »

rithdmc wrote: post #35
otherme123 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leading is not the same as replacing. See this figure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Ireland#/media/File:... In 2000, coal was about 20% of the energy mix, gas another 20%, oil about 50%. Wind was 0%. In 2024 coal was about 2%, gas still 20%, oil still 50%, but wind grew to about 15%. It seems that wind actually replaced coal. It is not only logical, but good, that wind first replaced coal (dirtiest), and ma…

I'm not sure where that data comes from. Oil was only around 3% in 2024. https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/electr...

Presumably it's also counting non-electricity energy generation. Road and rail transport still relies heavily on internal combustion engines.

Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

#42

Post by jerven »

rithdmc wrote: post #35
otherme123 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leading is not the same as replacing. See this figure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Ireland#/media/File:... In 2000, coal was about 20% of the energy mix, gas another 20%, oil about 50%. Wind was 0%. In 2024 coal was about 2%, gas still 20%, oil still 50%, but wind grew to about 15%. It seems that wind actually replaced coal. It is not only logical, but good, that wind first replaced coal (dirtiest), and ma…

I'm not sure where that data comes from. Oil was only around 3% in 2024. https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/electr...

Primary energy compared to electricity as energy. The first adds energy used in driving, chemical industry etc. the second is just the amount of electricity generated.

Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

#43

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

rithdmc wrote: post #35
otherme123 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leading is not the same as replacing. See this figure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Ireland#/media/File:... In 2000, coal was about 20% of the energy mix, gas another 20%, oil about 50%. Wind was 0%. In 2024 coal was about 2%, gas still 20%, oil still 50%, but wind grew to about 15%. It seems that wind actually replaced coal. It is not only logical, but good, that wind first replaced coal (dirtiest), and ma…

I'm not sure where that data comes from. Oil was only around 3% in 2024. https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/electr...

energy vs electricity. oil is a much bigger part of the energy mix due to chemical manufacturing

Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

#44

Post by troupo »

piokoch wrote: post #38
CalRobert wrote: post #13

Great to see, hopefully they can end turf burning too. (For those unaware it's basically where you take a wetland habitat that's also an amazing carbon store, cut it in to chunks, dry it out, and burn it for a very dirty heat source)

If you use Renewable Energy Sources, it may happen there will be no wind or no sun. So you need some auxiliary source of energy. If you want it at hand, this must be something with fast cold start. So black/brown coal power plan will not help you, similarly nuclear. You need to burn either gas or "biomass", that is wood/turf, etc. Those power plants have about 1h cold start. Hence, in order to have RES you need to em…

> this must be something with fast cold start. So black/brown coal power plan will not help you, similarly nuclear.

Nuclear plants provide base load and they are extremely fast at ramping up/lowering production. All modern nuclear plants are capable of changing power output at 3-5% of nameplate capacity per minute: https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12...

You don't shut down power plants. None of the power plants ever do a "fast cold start"

> The end result now is that electricity in Europe is the most expensive on the World, so all manufacturing is moved to Asia

The production moved to Asia due to extremely cheap labor, not due to electricity costs.

Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

#45

Post by bramhaag »

https://beyondfossilfuels.org/europes-coal-exit/ keeps track of coal phase-out commitments. 24 European countries still use coal generators, and 6 have not even planned to phase them out (Serbia, Moldova, Turkey, Poland, Kosovo, Bosnia).

Never used coal power:

  Albania, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Switzerland, Norway
Phased out:

  2016: Belgium
  2020: Sweden, Austria
  2021: Portugal
  2024: United Kingdom
  2025: Ireland
Phase-out planned:

  2026: Slovakia, Greece
  2027: France
  2028: Italy, Denmark
  2029: The Netherlands, Hungary, Finland
  2030: Spain, North Macedonia
  2032: Romania
  2033: Slovenia, Czechia, Croatia
  2035: Ukraine
  2038: Germany
  2040: Bulgaria
  2041: Montenegro

Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

#46

Post by happymellon »

citrin_ru wrote: post #12
hvb2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh? No they didn't stop at all? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_Kingd...

Tories during 2015-2023 made construction of new onshore wind farms all but impossible (removed subsidies and made planning permissions very difficult). I would assume Labor could reverse these polices but haven't seen anything in news about this.

And a lot of offshore was constructed during that period.

So still claiming that we didn't build any wind power was false.

Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

#48

Post by cogman10 »

aurareturn wrote: post #39
reedf1 wrote: post #27

No country will be truly coal-free until they are a net energy exporter and they do not import any goods that use coal-based energy in their supply chain. Europe has de-industrialized which means it has effectively exported its coal burden.

I agree. Whenever numbers show that China is the largest CO2 polluter currently, it needs to be mentioned that China manufactures much of the world's physical goods.

China's CO2 emissions have been falling for the last 2 years, even as they've increased their manufacturing capacity.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...

Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

#49

Post by madaxe_again »

reedf1 wrote: post #27

No country will be truly coal-free until they are a net energy exporter and they do not import any goods that use coal-based energy in their supply chain. Europe has de-industrialized which means it has effectively exported its coal burden.

Steel is the tough one - the vast majority of new steel is produced using blast furnaces and coke. DRI is still a fringe product.

I mean, the UK proudly trumpets that they're coal-free, while entertaining a new coking coal mine.

Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

#50

Post by ceejayoz »

bananzamba wrote: post #34
reedf1 wrote: post #27

No country will be truly coal-free until they are a net energy exporter and they do not import any goods that use coal-based energy in their supply chain. Europe has de-industrialized which means it has effectively exported its coal burden.

Air quality will improve, just not CO2

Somehow that’s an often missed aspect of this. Yeah, ditching coal has a wide array of nice side effects. It has killed many, many more than the world’s nuclear accidents.
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