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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)

#361

Post by reillyse »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #281
FrojoS wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This. Fossil fuels are not cheap in Ireland, I think we only produce a small quantity of natural gas, everything else is imported. Ireland should be running towards renewables, we have no indigenous fossil fuels industry to lose and every watt we generate from renewables is money that stays in Ireland. We should be focused on reducing nimbyism and building out renewables.

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

#362

Post by dylan604 »

cguess wrote: post #347
FrojoS wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Only if you ignore all externalities including: - environmental damage from mining (yes this exists for renewables too) - global warming - pollution on city infrastructure - pollution on health - the sunk costs causing higher transition costs when inevitably you transfer to renewables anyways.

> Only if you ignore all externalities

Do not discount how easy that is to do. Your list is of costs not to any bottom line of a company with bean counters. Those external costs are out side the scope of their concerns. Your list of concerns would be something for C-suite types, but the pressure of stock prices again make the external costs easy to set aside.

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

#363

Post by cguess »

dylan604 wrote: post #362
cguess wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Coal is cheap Only if you ignore all externalities including: - environmental damage from mining (yes this exists for renewables too) - global warming - pollution on city infrastructure - pollution on health - the sunk costs causing higher transition costs when inevitably you transfer to renewables anyways.

> Only if you ignore all externalities Do not discount how easy that is to do. Your list is of costs not to any bottom line of a company with bean counters. Those external costs are out side the scope of their concerns. Your list of concerns would be something for C-suite types, but the pressure of stock prices again make the external costs easy to set aside.

Sure, but as a consumer you can also care about these things.

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

#364

Post by Sebguer »

moominpapa wrote: post #360
dewey wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn't about Ireland specifically so don't get hung up on that. It's a general shift away from coal.

So are China, generally shifting away from coal?

yes: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/china-...

do you have any other questions?

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

#366

Post by amiga386 »

Gravityloss wrote: post #351
amiga386 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're mistaken. Onshore wind in England was de-facto but not de-jure banned by the Tories in 2018, due to a footnote inserted in their National Planning Policy Framework. Labour removed this footnote in 2024, immediately after winning the election. [0] Offshore wind was never affected, nor onshore wind in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. [0] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/policy-statement-...

Thanks, I was quite mistaken indeed! I wonder how much onshore England then affected the big picture.

Well, Tories would argue that you can't get the really big turbines onshore that you can offshore, so it doesn't really matter. Tiddly little turbines don't generate that much, and why spend lots of money on the planning process and fighting NIMBYs when you can generate it offshore?

However, it does matter, when looked at in whole with the need for capacity in the National Grid. A pile of turbines across SE England would have really helped, because a lot of the offshore wind and Scottish wind power has to be dumped, and gas generators fired up instead, due to lack of grid capacity to distribute that power across the country.

We should, of course, have completed upgrades to the grid by now, but they're late.

Here's a great article about "curtailment" as it's known: https://ukerc.ac.uk/news/transmission-network-unavailability...

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

#367

Post by idiotsecant »

ljf wrote: post #355
linhns wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Coal is cheap, abundant, energy dense. Nuclear defeats coal in all of these aspects, aside from the high upfront cost.

Upfront costs... then running costs (in the UK at least, it has to command a premium over other energy prices, to be profitable)... afterwards costs (in the UK no private company is on the hook for decommissioning their nuclear plants, the population will pick up that cost through taxes)... But sure, nuclear is cheap if you ignore all those things.

We're already ignoring them all for coal plants, why not?

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

#368

Post by zahlman »

rwmj wrote: post #32
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.

It's more nuanced than that. This article is about the US (a worse polluter than Ireland), but it shows only about a small difference because of offshoring emissions: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/no-the-us-didnt-outsource-our-...

I don't know if I buy this argument. If the US sends oil to another country, which burns it for energy, produces a finished good and exports that back to the US, then the CO2 released isn't accounted for in production-based numbers. But it seems to me like it isn't really properly accounted for in the consumption-based numbers that Noah is holding up, because those are effectively giving the US a credit for exporting the oil in the first place that offsets the imported good. As he says, the US's exports are carbon-intensive and that largely explains the difference being so small.

Noah also tries to refute the perception that manufacturing is in decline in the US, but he doesn't adjust per-capita and doesn't account for the obvious fact that major US exports are looking more and more like raw materials and less like finished goods, while imports are the other way around. Aircraft and ICs used to compete for top spot on the US export list. Since 2008 it's petroleum and oil.

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

#369

Post by interludead »

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…

The bigger issue might be whether the transition is being managed in a way that protects consumers

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

#370

Post by moominpapa »

danny_codes wrote: post #331
moominpapa wrote: post #279

[flagged]

Seem to be on their way. Solar power is cheaper than coal now for some projects. In 10 years coal will be entirely obsolete. Though of course phase out will take longer

What projects is it cheaper for? And why will coal be obsolete in 10 years time?
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