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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)

#231

Post by short_sells_poo »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #214
saltysalt wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another Irishman here, completely agree with your comment. My domestic gas and electric bills have never been higher, insane inflation for nothing more than political virtue signalling.

> Another Irishman here, completely agree with your comment. My domestic gas and electric bills have never been higher, insane inflation for nothing more than political virtue signalling. The only part of your bills that could be regarded as virtue signalling is the carbon tax, which is driven by government regulation. The vast increases in energy costs were driven firstly by Russia (when they invaded Ukraine) and th…

> Ultimately though, the only way to fix this is to build a lot of wind (industrial scale) and solar (residential scale) as otherwise we're at the mercy of world events.

I'd add that this is only part of the equation because: what do you do on an overcast day with no wind?

You need significant storage capacity before you can become isolated from world events. Until then, you need power generation that you can bring online on short notice: coal, gas, hydro, etc. Traditionally, gas was used for this because it's easy to store, quick to get going and gas plants can also burn coal if needed.

Unfortunately, the nice properties of gas (easy to store and transport) mean that it's a global commodity. It will go where they pay the most, which means that far away events can cause a price in gas prices globally.

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

#232

Post by invalidusernam3 »

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…

How much impact does it realistically have on climate change? I would expect it to be relatively small compared to things like owning a car?

In a perfect world we would want to reduce emissions as much as possible in every facet of life, but in the real world I think we should pick battles that have the biggest impact.

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

#233

Post by bjourne »

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…

What's your source for Irish coal energy being cheap!?

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

#234

Post by short_sells_poo »

saltysalt wrote: post #224
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another Irishman here, completely agree with your comment. My domestic gas and electric bills have never been higher, insane inflation for nothing more than political virtue signalling. The only part of your bills that could be regarded as virtue signalling is the carbon tax, which is driven by government regulation. The vast increases in energy costs were driven firstly by Russia (when they invaded Ukraine) and th…

A LNG terminal would help. Lots of bad infrastructure decisions have left us extremely exposed to those external shocks you mentioned.

An LNG terminal would not help for the current high prices. Europe is experiencing a gas price shock precisely because LNG is easy to store and transport. Asia gets half it's gas through the Strait of Hormuz, which is currently experiencing troubles. This means Asia is willing to pay a lot of premium for LNG, which in turn means that Europe has to match this premium otherwise LNG will go to Asia and not Europe.

Being dependent on gas is equal to being exposed to global shocks, unless you can cover your domestic needs purely with domestic gas extraction.

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

#235

Post by rsynnott »

karol wrote: post #200
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…

It's insanity to stop using country own resources and rely on unreliable tech and energy imports. As I browse the comments here I lament that most "above average IQ" folks still don't get this simple truth.

Ireland hasn't mined coal at all for about 40 years and _never_ really mined any significant part of its usage; even in the 19th century Ireland imported coal. Moneypoint was designed from the start to run on imported coal; it had no rail link, and a bloody great bulk-handling port attached to it. Getting rid of Moneypoint actually increased energy security (we do produce _some_ of our own natural gas, and the renewables don't require imports).

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

#236

Post by tpm »

phil21 wrote: post #197
blensor wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not expect HN to become this geopolitical. And are you sure about your claim? Every time I hear anything about China and Solar the core of it is that solar in China is growing more than anywhere else on the planet ( 40% increase in 2025 and creating ~11% of China's energy already ) And that there is no sign of that trend slowing down anytime soon. And why would it. Solar panels are dirt cheap and they have more…

They also are building more coal, gas, and nuclear than anyone else at epic yearly increases. That they have the internal political means to get large infrastructure projects done is laudible - they can actually build transmission lines that make unreliable energy sources like solar and wind feasible. In the US that is effectively impossible due to the NIMBY legal situation. That they lead in battery production is go…

> They also are building more coal, gas, and nuclear than anyone else at epic yearly increases.

Are they really? Coal use for power generation stopped growing, so newly built coal plants are replacing older, not adding to them. Nuclear while still being built does not seem to be accelerating anymore.

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

#237

Post by MiscIdeaMaker99 »

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…

Where was that coal coming from?

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

#238

Post by rsynnott »

saltysalt wrote: post #224
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another Irishman here, completely agree with your comment. My domestic gas and electric bills have never been higher, insane inflation for nothing more than political virtue signalling. The only part of your bills that could be regarded as virtue signalling is the carbon tax, which is driven by government regulation. The vast increases in energy costs were driven firstly by Russia (when they invaded Ukraine) and th…

A LNG terminal would help. Lots of bad infrastructure decisions have left us extremely exposed to those external shocks you mentioned.

An LNG terminal wouldn't help with cost (it would probably increase it a bit, if anything, as the cost of building it would have to be paid back). It's desirable from an energy _security_ perspective; as it is we are very dependent on a pipeline to Britain.

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

#239

Post by pimterry »

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.

Europe is less industrial than in the past, but by every measure I can find many countries (especially Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Italy) are significantly more industrialized than the US - around 1.5x to 3x as much industrial activity and employment per capita, depending on the measure. Even the very least industrialized of the major EU nations (e.g. Spain, Greece) only just drop down to match the US numbers per-capita.

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

#240

Post by ZeroGravitas »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #199
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…

> Over the last few years, we've graduated from providing cheap energy to now importing most of our energy. Back in days of yore (2006/07) I read a well-argued policy paper from a quango that no longer exists where it pointed out that Ireland was one of the most fossil fuel dependent nations in the world (particularly due to oil imports). Our energy prices first spiked around the same time, to "incentivise competitio…

Recent data on import depdency from a link someone posted:

> Ireland's energy import dependency was 79.6% in 2024, up from 78.3% in 2023 (for comparison, the EU average for 2023 was 58.3%).

> Ireland imported 100% of its oil, 79.5% of its gas, and 14.0% of its electricity in 2024.

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