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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)

#281

Post by bryanlarsen »

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.

> Coal is cheap, abundant, energy dense.

Coal is neither cheap nor abundant in Ireland.

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

#283

Post by cbeach »

rsynnott wrote: post #277
cbeach wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For Ireland, it's not so much the sourcing of fossil fuels, but the imposition of political taxes on fossil fuels onto consumers.

About 50% of the retail price of petrol in Ireland is tax (excise + carbon + VAT).

Overall fuel taxation in Ireland is ~50%, compared to 15-20% in the US. Although to be fair, most of Europe is doing the same thing to its population (during a cost of living crisis).

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

#284

Post by throwaway290 »

IE6 wrote: post #134
throw567643u8 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

China has a significant investment in solar and wind power - is that just to convince us it's a good idea to buy it?

if solar and wind is subsidized by europe or usa, selling solar and wind to them is great. taxpayer money goes east, everybody is happy, meanwhile china is constructing more coal plants than all the other countries combined https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/number-of...

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

#285

Post by Macha »

Spooky23 wrote: post #146
jahnu wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Solar is priced based on gas prices as a financial incentive to encourage producers to build solar. That’s because profiting from the difference between the cost of production for solar and the cost of production from gas is supposed to be the incentive to build solar.

The gas prices went up massively in 2022 with the war in Ukraine, and even though that subsided before the war in Iran a little, the existing supply companies are not going to give back an increase in the price they’ve gained because their prices dropped.

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

#286

Post by amarant »

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…

Hey you're still better than Germany that closed all their eco friendly power down and started importing so much energy it's had an effect on prices in Sweden!

I mean, at least you shut down the coal plants, those are legit bad for the environment. Germans shut down nuclear which is clean.

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

#287

Post by jmward01 »

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.

> It seems logical that ending the use of existing coal energy infrastructure puts upward pressure on prices

Only if you externalize environmental costs. The point is that coal is actually really expensive. The only real argument is how fast the implicit subsidy on these externalized costs should be removed. The world has had decades to slowly remove these subsidies and failed to do so. The impacts caused by these externalized factors are starting to stack up and so should the prices.

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

#288

Post by NamlchakKhandro »

turtlesdown11 wrote: post #271
karol wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

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

#289

Post by NamlchakKhandro »

rsynnott wrote: post #277
cbeach wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

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

#290

Post by phil21 »

crote wrote: post #99
troupo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this must be something with fast cold start. So black/brown coal power plan will not help you, similarly nuclear. Nuclear plants provide base load and they are extremely fast at ramping up/lowering production. All modern nuclear plants are capable of changing power output at 3-5% of nameplate capacity per minute: https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12... You don't shut down power plants. None…

> Nuclear plants provide base load and they are extremely fast at ramping up/lowering production The obvious counterexample is Chernobyl, where a big contributor was the fact that they were unable to scale it down & back up as desired. Yes, nuclear reactors can scale down rapidly - but you have to wait several hours until it can scale back up! Besides, the linked paper only covers load-following in a traditional grid…

The answer is you don't scale nuclear up or down, it's a silly waste of time and effort to even think about it. The fuel costs are effectively a rounding error, so running at 100% 24x7 is the only way to ever think about how nuclear should operate.

If you are going to curtail, you curtail other sources including solar and wind.

Nuclear fits quite well for the baseload you need. It's more expensive, but if you are going to need X capacity 24x7 and build nuclear, you simply build enough to provide just that plus perhaps a few extra for redundancy when another one goes offline. Then use gas peakers for the "oh shit" days difference between what nuclear is providing and solar was expected to but could not.

I don't understand the fascination folks have about nuclear not being able to following the grid. They don't need to, since they only ever remotely make sense when operated 24x7 at 100%. If you always have 1TW of grid usage every night during your lowest usage period - build that much nuclear as your starting point and figure out the rest from there. Nuclear's share of the total mix should be a straight line on a graph outside of plant shutdowns for maintenance.

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