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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)

#141

Post by catlifeonmars »

wolvoleo wrote: post #71
nixass wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Probably but damage from nuclear accidents isn't only measured in deaths. No coal plant accident has caused an exclusion zone for 40 years.

And not all nuclear plants are the same. I don’t think it’s reasonable at all to compare Chernobyl to modern reactor designs, just because they both use the word “nuclear”.

Apso not sure if you are including coal mining, and all of the deaths and negative health outcomes as a result of the industry

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

#142

Post by myrmidon »

21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #79
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.

europes coal powerplants are in china, its polution is in china, the products of china are in europe and the producers from china live in europe and the us. China even offers greenwashing as a service, so people can buy for green notes a green consciousness.

> europes coal powerplants are in china, its polution is in china, the products of china are in europe and the producers from china live in europe and the us.

This is generally overstated. Emissions imported or exported via trade are significantly smaller than domestic emissions for almost every country. In the EU vs China case, accounting for imported/exported emissions basically changes which of the two is doing better, but emission levels are pretty close to begin with (US is already doing significantly worse than China either way).

For China, we are talking about ~1 ton/person/year from trade (in favor of China), while local emissions are at ~8 tons/person/year [1].

You make a valid point, but looking at the actual numbers it turns out that this makes (surprisingly) little difference.

[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/imported-or-exported-co-e...

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

#143

Post by Zigurd »

Dirty power generation, and dirty toxic hazardous industry in general, discriminate against the poor and minorities. That carries an enormous social cost that goes uncounted in discussions like the ones on this thread.

Nuclear discriminates against capitalism. The cost makes the choice of nuclear irrational. The inability to insure nuclear in the private market makes it a travesty of free markets.

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

#144

Post by sampo »

bramhaag wrote: post #45

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…

Estonia has lots of oil shale (not same thing as shale oil). They never needed to import coal, because they have their own fossil fuel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Estonia#Oil-shale

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

#145

Post by catlifeonmars »

sunaookami wrote: post #107
ceejayoz wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why even make it about nuclears vs coal? Both are bad, both are hazards and both are not green energy.

What’s wrong with nuclear energy?

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

#146

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

If this stuff is cheaper, why are prices going up?

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

#147

Post by ben_w »

throw567643u8 wrote: post #119
walthamstow wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Goal-shifting aside, and be that as it may for offshoring, but Neoliberalism was Thatcher, and she was popular in part because the trade unions were seen as too powerful, which in part was because of the then-recent history of the coal miners' union going on strike and forcing a three-day week for much of British industry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week

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

#148

Post by s_dev »

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 not that old in the context of energy generation which operates over years and decades.

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

#149

Post by bramhaag »

brazzy wrote: post #86
bramhaag wrote: post #45

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…

> Never used coal power: > Albania, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Switzerland, Norway I very much doubt this is true for any of those countries. In fact, I know it is untrue for Switzerland, although they did stop using it long ago (mid 20th century). Edit: Norway actually ran a coal power plant until 2023, on Spitsbergen

I agree that the wording is a little misleading. "No coal ever in the electricity mix" is what's stated on the site.

It seems they consider only coal use in the 21st century in mainland Europe + UK (i.e. not Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard, etc.).

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

#150

Post by NicuCalcea »

bramhaag wrote: post #45

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…

Moldova's coal plant is in Transnistria, a territory occupied by Russia. There are no phasing out plans because we have no control over it.
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