Earlier quoted context omitted.
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They're also closing down coal plants faster than anyone else and actually faster than planned because of the price of solar. Check your facts.
Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
291–300 of 712 posts
Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
A very fair question and the answer is complicated. Production costs and transmission costs are separate. Also demand changes the market rate. And even if renewables are cheaper to produce in a market usually the highest price regardless of source sets the price. This is to incentivise the cheapest production methods to be invested in. It’s a massive topic and I encourage everyone to go and dive into it. It’s endless…
> This is to incentivise the cheapest production methods to be invested in. It's also just a rule of economics. The price is set at the cost of the most expensive production necessary to meet demand. So if solar could fulfill 100% of energy demand, price would be the cost of solar, and any other more expensive generation would either lose money, shut down or idle. But if we shut down or idle those today we wouldn't h…
... So then why isn't the solar to replace the more expensive plants getting built?
Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
#293[flagged]
Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
#294[flagged]
Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
#295Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
#296Irish 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…
> Ireland is richer than it has ever been.
Isn't that more about big tech companies using Ireland as a tax dodge, rather than a sign of average people doing well?
For less-well-off people, energy costs in the UK are a huge issue, they're more than twice what they were pre-Covid. Energy bills are second only to housing costs when it comes to the cost of living crisis. Although grocery price inflation/shrinkflation has been pretty shocking too.
Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
#297Irish 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…
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…
If Israel can build an electrical grid connection to Greece then Ireland should have no problem building good connections with France and the UK.
Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
#298[flagged]
What’s the alternative? Keep polluting the air?
Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
If this stuff is cheaper, why are prices going up?
A very fair question and the answer is complicated. Production costs and transmission costs are separate. Also demand changes the market rate. And even if renewables are cheaper to produce in a market usually the highest price regardless of source sets the price. This is to incentivise the cheapest production methods to be invested in. It’s a massive topic and I encourage everyone to go and dive into it. It’s endless…
It's really not. Energy grids are not designed for distributed generation. In my US state, that means billions of infrastructure investment.
The people using carbon to create forcing functions to transition to renewables conveniently forget to mention that. Which sucks, as solar in particular is almost a miracle product, but at this point my delivery charges to get electricity exceed the electricity supply by 10%. 20 years ago, delivery was 30% of supply.
My state, New York, decided it would be smart to turn off the nuclear plant that supplies 20% of NYC electricity, and replace it over a decade with a rube goldberg arrangement of gas, offshore wind, solar, and Canadian imports. The solar is hampered by distribution capacity, gas was slowed down by corruption and is being limited by environmental activists, we elected a president that believes that windmills give you cancer, and of course we are picking fights with Canada now.
Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
#300Earlier 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 make us more beholden to foreign powers.