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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)

#51

Post by madaxe_again »

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…

Pumped storage hydro is extremely cheap and efficient and has been around for more than a century. LiFePo4 batteries are now cheap enough that they're a cost-competitive alternative. Flywheel storage plugs the inertia gap nicely.

The tech exists - it's mostly just a matter of political will. The economics already justify it. People are making considerable money by starting up BESSs (Battery Energy Storage Systems) and doing time arbitrage on energy.

cf. Iberia, who recently learned that effective storage and intertial pick-up is integral to a stable and efficient power network, and are now spending heavily on both.

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

#52

Post by aurareturn »

cogman10 wrote: post #48
aurareturn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I wonder if on-shorting manufacturing would mean a higher increase in CO2 because China is leading the world in green energy creation.

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

#53

Post by cogman10 »

DamonHD wrote: post #40
rithdmc wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the domestic heating use is a drop in the bucket compared to commercial extraction of peat for export, or historical use for electricity generation. I've only so many shits to give, and people heating their homes doesn't rank.

People heating their homes can be very sigificant. In the UK ~15% of all its territorial GHGs come from heating with gas: actual CO2 from the home boiler flues. CO2 from small amounts of rural home heating is probably not the big thing to be worried about, especially if local recent biomass, eg wood from forest management. But there are still nasties (PMs, biodiversity losses, etc) to be considered and that should be…

At least in 2004 (not sure if it's still the case) there are some homes which still burned coal for heat. That is the nastiest smell out there.

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

#54

Post by einr »

rithdmc wrote: post #7
philipwhiuk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the difference is made up by renewables and not oil?

Natural gas is still the leader by a good margin.

No, it's not?

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/interactive-publications/e...

  crude oil and petroleum products (37.7%)
  natural gas (20.4%)
  renewable energy (19.5%)
  solid fuels (10.6%)
  nuclear energy (11.8%)
(2023 numbers)

So natural gas was just barely more than renewables in 2023, but according to the source below the line was crossed in 2025 and renewables now provide more than all fossil fuels put together:

https://electrek.co/2026/01/21/wind-and-solar-overtook-fossi...

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

#55

Post by DonsDiscountGas »

elAhmo wrote: post #19
redfloatplane wrote: post #2

(June 2025)

I always wondered why someone decides to post something fairly old, as this is 'not really news' given it is so old.

It's new to me. Also is not even a year old, should we only allow info from the last week?

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

#56

Post by clickety_clack »

ben_w wrote: post #10
rwmj wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'd be better off with (and are building out) offshore and onshore wind. If you've ever been to the west coast of Ireland you'll know they've got almost unlimited wind energy. The country is targeting 5GW of capacity by 2030 and 37GW in the distant future[1]. If only they could harness the power of rain, Ireland would truly be an energy superpower. [1] https://www.irishtimes.com/special-reports/2025/10/30/winds-..…

> If only they could harness the power of rain, Ireland would truly be an energy superpower. I know this is in jest, but that's basically "dam up some valley rivers and put a hydroelectric generator on the end", and unfortunately Ireland isn't so good for that. (It's not just the physical geology, it's also all the people living in the places you'd flood). Hydro as a battery is easier and works in far more locations,…

Ireland briefly had the biggest hydroelectric dam in the world until the Hoover dam was built… but that was before electricity production really took off. Ireland doesn’t really have the geography for dams, the hills and rivers are far too small.

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

#57

Post by cogman10 »

madaxe_again wrote: post #51
piokoch wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Pumped storage hydro is extremely cheap and efficient and has been around for more than a century. LiFePo4 batteries are now cheap enough that they're a cost-competitive alternative. Flywheel storage plugs the inertia gap nicely. The tech exists - it's mostly just a matter of political will. The economics already justify it. People are making considerable money by starting up BESSs (Battery Energy Storage Systems) an…

> Pumped storage hydro

It's a pipedream. Yes it's cheap and efficient, but it requires the geography and the will to destroy a local ecosystem.

BESS is what will ultimately win. It's pretty energy dense and it can be deployed on pretty much any junk land location. The only fight you'll have is with the neighbors who don't like it.

My power company, Idaho power, is deploying a 200MWh BESS on a slice of land they've owned for decades near one of their substations. The hardest part has been the permitting (which is now done).

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

#60

Post by nixass »

ceejayoz wrote: post #50
bananzamba wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Coal probably kills more people in a single day than all nuclear accidents ever combined
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