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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)

#271

Post by turtlesdown11 »

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.

Hard to see past the scientific consensus on global warming

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

#272

Post by vladms »

FrojoS wrote: post #262
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual causes of electricity cost rises in Ireland being higher than Europe are: Lower population density on a grid without good connections to neighbours. Previous underinvestment in network infrastructure. Gas price rises combined with Ireland having less renewables that the EU average (middle of the pack for electricity, 3rd from bottom on total energy). Maybe saving the world a bit harder would have helped ke…

> The actual causes of electricity cost rises in Ireland being higher than Europe are Wrong comparison. Most of Europe has way too high electricity prices. It seems logical that ending the use of existing coal energy infrastructure puts upward pressure on prices. Coal is cheap, abundant, energy dense. Yes, burning coal causes lots of problems and I support ending it's use, but this is besides the point.

> Most Europe has way too high electricity prices.

Way to high compared to what? Some countries do not even have a problem with prices but with capacity (Netherlands). They would be willing to pay but they do not have the grid to deliver where the thing is needed, and it's hard to build new grids in high density areas.

> It seems logical that ending the use of existing coal energy infrastructure lead to an increase of prises.

But doesn't this depend a lot on planning and investing in alternatives rather the just closing or not the coal? Sure, if you just close one source and leave everything else untouched prices will increase, but doesn't sound like the smartest approach overall...

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

#273

Post by behringer »

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…

Why not make the rich pay for this? They can afford it. You're taking your anger out on the wrong people.

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

#274

Post by cbeach »

rsynnott wrote: post #243
cbeach wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Their comment is kinda nonsense, tho. Every single lump of coal burned in Moneypoint over its operating life was imported. We don't have significant coal reserves, and Moneypoint was designed from the start to run on imported coal; it does not even have a railway link.

Their comment is talking about a wider context than this single coal power station.

In the UK, Net Zero politics means we are killing our own North Sea fossil fuel extraction, only to purchase North Sea fossil fuel from Norway, at an increased environmental (and financial) cost.

That's the kind of political lunacy the OP is aluding to.

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

#275

Post by 1970-01-01 »

crote wrote: post #123
jorisboris wrote: post #66

I feel we’re framing it in a negative way Our goal shouldn’t be to be coal free. Our goal should be to be 100% renewable. If we set up our goals in terms of what we don’t want, we end up in the situation we are right now: high energy costs, very dependent on energy imports and a high risk of loosing our industry

> Our goal should be to be 100% renewable. No, our goal is to reduce CO2 emissions as quickly as possible . Shutting down coal plants is a quick and easy win, as pretty much every possible replacement is less polluting. It might even make sense to replace them with gas turbines: base load today, peaker plant tomorrow, emergency source later on.

Reducing is frivolous today. We will break through the tipping point in 2030. This will be the coolest century this millennium. There's no way to stop it. We needed to shut down emissions years ago. The only thing we can do proactively is invest in moon-shot tech such as fusion and ocean wave generation and wait for the planet to recover.

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

#276

Post by PowerElectronix »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #201
Dannymetconan wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

| more and more cost-of-living protests They must have been real quiet. Most the protests are related to how expensive it has become to rent / buy in this country. Ireland has encouraged and allowed a huge number of data centers to be setup here and been very slow to implement legislation for other green forms of energy generation. We don't need dirty forms of energy production here like coal and peat just to make en…

> Ireland has encouraged and allowed a huge number of data centers to be setup here and been very slow to implement legislation for other green forms of energy generation. We don't need dirty forms of energy production here like coal and peat just to make energy cheap. Relying on Oil and Gas leaves us hugely at the whims of the international markets. It's grid capacity more than anything which is the issue, and (like…

Governmens around the world trying to shift blame from gtid caoacity managers (so, themselves) to users because "they just consume too much".

In no other industry are providers ever worried about selling too much.

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

#277

Post by rsynnott »

cbeach wrote: post #274
rsynnott wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their comment is kinda nonsense, tho. Every single lump of coal burned in Moneypoint over its operating life was imported. We don't have significant coal reserves, and Moneypoint was designed from the start to run on imported coal; it does not even have a railway link.

Their comment is talking about a wider context than this single coal power station. In the UK, Net Zero politics means we are killing our own North Sea fossil fuel extraction, only to purchase North Sea fossil fuel from Norway, at an increased environmental (and financial) cost. That's the kind of political lunacy the OP is aluding to.

Okay, but do you have any examples of such alleged lunacy in Ireland? Ireland has no economically exploitable oil or coal, and what gas there is is largely exhausted.

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

#278

Post by [deleted] »

jahnu wrote: post #132
throw567643u8 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> they know windpower and solar are not viable long term That’s why they are installing it all over their country at the fastest pace of any country by far? That’s why they probably hit peak oil consumption? The coal thing is complicated in China. They are replacing many old coal stations, local governments are fearful of being caught short in a cold winter which has happened. Rate of coal consumption increases is sl…

[deleted]

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

#280

Post by kayo_20211030 »

There's a declaration that a 915 MW power-plant was removed from the grid, and moved to emergency status only.

However, every other number in the piece is mentioned as some multiple of Wh's (GWh typically). That makes it very hard to tell what proportion of capacity was removed from the system as a proportion of the total generating capacity. I think the writer might have served us better with the use of some helpful percentage comparisons.

From the SEAI report (2024) (https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/key-pu...)

- Electricity demand in Ireland was 32.9 TWh in 2024, up 4.1% on 2023-levels

- Commercial services, which includes the ICT sub-sector, accounted for 41.2% of electricity demand.

- The residential sector accounted for 25.5% of electricity demand in 2024.

- Data centres accounted for 21.2% of all electricity demand in 2024.

- Data centres account for 88.2% of the increase observed in Ireland’s electricity demand since 2015.

If I've done my math correctly, Moneypoint generates about 8TWh, if operating continuously; which it's probably not. Can we say 6-7 TWh?

That is not an insubstantial portion of the total.

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