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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)

#111

Post by triceratops »

21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #82
cogman10 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-coal-plant-t... They have more coal power plants planned and your data hickup worked out during recensions and covid.

In 2024, well after Covid, 88% of new electric capacity added in China came from renewables.

https://www.eia.gov/international/analysis/country/chn

Their existing grid uses coal because they have coal, just like the US uses gas because it has gas. And obviously as old coal plants are retired they're going to build new ones. They don't use the new plants for additional capacity. As they add more solar and storage, which they're building a lot of, they're going to absolutely crush the coal burning too. It's literally a national security issue for them.

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

#112

Post by crote »

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…

> If you use Renewable Energy Sources, it may happen there will be no wind or no sun.

Yes, but this rarely happens, so any potential solution should be designed around it being idle 99% of the time.

> Those power plants have about 1h cold start.

Gas turbines can spin up significantly faster. However, the weather is quite predictable, so it is unlikely that this will be needed. Besides, battery storage is the perfect solution as an ultra-fast ramp-up holdover source until the turbines are at 100%.

> Hence, in order to have RES you need to emit CO2.

Or you equip the handful of gas turbines you use to make up for that 1% gap in renewables with carbon capture? It's not ideal, but it is very much doable.

> Simply use nuclear power plants and do not bother with RES

... and have your electricity be even more expensive?

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

#113

Post by jahnu »

redfloatplane wrote: post #28
CalRobert wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, I was referring to domestic heat in rural areas.

Unfortunately I think that's going to be very, very hard to sell to many people here in rural Ireland (Roscommon in my case). I would really love to see people stop burning turf but it's such a strong cultural thing that in some parts you'd be ostracised for even thinking the thought. I've personally spoken to people (who are otherwise quite environmentally aware) who suggest they'd never vote for the Green Party bec…

I think they should be allowed for cultural reasons but only if cut by hand like we did when I was a kid :)

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

#114

Post by rsynnott »

cauliflower99 wrote: post #70

Irish man here - Over the last few years, we've graduated from providing cheap energy to now importing most of our energy. We've seen huge energy price increases as a result. We're seeing more and more cost-of-living protests, the war now means more will suffer with fuel prices and we're still going ahead with closing down energy suppliers (this is a 2025 article but the point still stands). To anyone praising these…

We never had particularly cheap energy. The recent increases in energy cost were largely driven by gas price increases due to the war in Ukraine.

> we've graduated from providing cheap energy to now importing most of our energy.

... Eh? We've always imported most of our energy. Or, well, okay, since about the mid 19th century we've imported most of our energy. All coal used in Moneypoint was imported. We do produce some of our own gas, but it is not and never has been enough. The fraction of energy that we import has actually fallen somewhat due to wind and solar.

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

#115

Post by throw567643u8 »

jahnu wrote: post #94
cauliflower99 wrote: post #70

Irish man here - Over the last few years, we've graduated from providing cheap energy to now importing most of our energy. We've seen huge energy price increases as a result. We're seeing more and more cost-of-living protests, the war now means more will suffer with fuel prices and we're still going ahead with closing down energy suppliers (this is a 2025 article but the point still stands). To anyone praising these…

This attitude is ill informed. Ireland is richer than it has ever been. Poverty and housing difficulties have nothing to do with reducing emissions. Ireland partly got rich by being a massive CO2 polluter per capita. Now we are rich it’s only fair we lead in transitioning to renewables. Renewables are cheaper now than most forms of energy production. Grids need investment. I despair at these short sighted and fairly…

[flagged]

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

#116

Post by rsynnott »

JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #106
cauliflower99 wrote: post #70

Irish man here - Over the last few years, we've graduated from providing cheap energy to now importing most of our energy. We've seen huge energy price increases as a result. We're seeing more and more cost-of-living protests, the war now means more will suffer with fuel prices and we're still going ahead with closing down energy suppliers (this is a 2025 article but the point still stands). To anyone praising these…

I do often wonder with this kind of thing whether an unspoken aspect of it is about not depleting the country's fossil fuels From what I understand Ireland has very little natural gas, very little coal and a not particularly large amount of peat. If they didn't shift towards importing all of that would be gone in the very near future. It's a bit weird how it gets branded as a solely green move when there's clearly ot…

> very little coal

For practical purposes no coal. There are no working coal mines in Ireland, and Moneypoint would have run entirely on imported coal since it was built. It was built with a bulk handling terminal for this purpose (very visible in photos of the plant: https://esb.ie/news---insights/inside-esb/moneypoint-power-s...).

Note that it doesn't have a rail link; even if there had been the desire to use domestic coal and someone had gotten a mine going, there would have been no way to get it there.

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

#117

Post by triceratops »

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…

> If you use Renewable Energy Sources, it may happen there will be no wind or no sun

If you have to import fuel, it may happen that no ships can get through. Or the fuel becomes too expensive to buy because of war, natural disasters, or market forces. Ain't nobody turning off the sun or wind.

> Maybe, when we have technology to store efficiently electricity at scale

Actually we have it now.

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

#119

Post by throw567643u8 »

walthamstow wrote: post #105
throw567643u8 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in England we now drag the coal over on smoke spewing ships from Japan and Australia, rather than mine it here. The sum total of CO2 is higher than if we just mined it here. Net zero box ticking.

We only use coal for steel. It's tiny. Ships are very efficient and our mines leak more methane than Aus ones, so the emissions are actually lower.

That's because we let all the industries go offshore, for the promises of Neoliberalism. That should never have happened either.

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

#120

Post by belorn »

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.

The goal of net energy exporter assumes that energy produced at one time can be exchange for energy produced at an other time for the same price, and that assumption has not been true in Europe for decades. You can be a net energy exporter and still be dependent energy imports for more than 50% of the energy a country consumes, as has been demonstrated by Denmark.

I will happily trade 10 unit of energy for just a single unit of energy, assuming I get to decide when I give the 10 units and when I can demand the 1 unit. A lot of profit in the European energy market can be made by such a "bad" deal.

The date when a country energy grid is free from fossil fuels, like coal, is when the grid has no longer any demand during the year for producing or importing energy produced by fossil fuels.

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