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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)

#391

Post by redeeman »

reillyse wrote: post #361
bryanlarsen wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

does this renewable policy of wind farms etc also extend to the rain forest being cut down for balsawood? or the landfilles the massive chunks of fiberglass coated wings then get put into?

I guess we need a new planet when we're done filling it with junk and have depleted all the rain forest etc

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

#392

Post by redeeman »

Dannymetconan wrote: post #204
Spooky23 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this stuff is cheaper, why are prices going up?

21% of all energy is now being consumed by data centers with not enough investment in new forms of energy generation. This is a policy decision by the government. More realistically it is a decision to not proactively do anything and instead rely on market prices to encourage new entrants to the market. https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-dcmec/dat...

weird, because wouldnt part of the price for electricity include the network?

Are you telling me that the electricity purchasing is like me purchasing from amazon, but but never charges shipping, or factor it into the products, and then suddenly cant ship because all trucks are used and no money to buy new?

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

#393

Post by jahnu »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #340
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…

„Ireland“ is rich because companies have their office there. „The Irish“ are not rich. Talk about ill informed.

Yes Ireland is rich.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...

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

#394

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

ceejayoz wrote: post #321
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We already have wires that cross continents to smooth out supply variations. It's exceedingly rare you get no sun and no wind over entire continents for an extended period. I can be wrong but you would probably lose tons of efficiency even within High Voltage DC lines if everyday late night we take energy from different countries. Also this is getting outside of topic of discussion for me because one of the reasons…

> You mention a comment and I respond and then we get to batteries again. Yes. Because they're the answer here. > Also this is getting outside of topic of discussion for me because one of the reasons we want Nuclear or Green energy in general is also the environmental plus the sovereign plus the long term affordability plans. Good luck with nuclear sovereignty, if that's your concern. How many uranium mines are in th…

> Good luck with nuclear sovereignty, if that's your concern. How many uranium mines are in the UK?

I can't speak about UK but considering how cheap Uranium is, can UK not do cost analysis. Uranium is abundant material compared to Oil/Coal.

> /me gestures at the last 50 years of historical evidence

> "Why not try nuclear" is like "why not try communism?" for physics nerds. We have tried it.

Maybe, but I think that, I can speak about the problem within US which I can better explain but US had nuclear fearmongering attempts and Senators passed laws which increased regulations on it to the point that some regulations contradict past regulations.

Nuclear power plants being built on loan in such a flimsy regulatory market was what lead to the downfall essentially within US

Nuclear fearmongering and lobbying efforts from Oil Industry as they are one of the most strong opposers of nuclear energy[0]

Once again, how do I explain this but nuclear produces 3.2x less carbon emissions than Solar[1]

We are able to build hydropower plants, we are able to launch spaceships into moon and outer space. It's definitely possible to build nuclear if lobbying effort decreases.

I'd say that its our dependence on Oil and Coal which have been the problem. I have nothing against solar and that is something that I am saying from the start. At some point we should look towards transition towards nuclear as well. To give up on that would simply not be ideal.

[0]: https://climatecoalition.org/who-opposes-nuclear-energy/

[1]: https://solartechonline.com/blog/how-much-co2-does-solar-ene...

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

#395

Post by quotemstr »

interludead wrote: post #375
CalRobert wrote: post #13

Great to see, hopefully they can end turf burning too. (For those unaware it's basically where you take a wetland habitat that's also an amazing carbon store, cut it in to chunks, dry it out, and burn it for a very dirty heat source)

Peat is probably the worst fuel from a carbon perspective

And Germany of all places mines huge amounts of brown coal, which is only barely not peat.

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

#396

Post by babypuncher »

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 longer we put off solving climate change, the more expensive it is going to be for the poor and middle-classes.

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

#397

Post by pocksuppet »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #338
vladms wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

Way to high compared to actual cost. Almost half of fuel and electricity costs in Germany is tax.

If it's due to tax it can't be used to advocate the pros or cons of market arrangements, since we don't know what the market would be doing in the absence of the tax.

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

#398

Post by pembrook »

Dannymetconan wrote: post #191
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…

| 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…

Real estate and energy prices are both two sides of the same coin and included in the cost of living...if you aren't aware?

Also, both of these problems are caused by the same thing: NIMBY-ism.

Modern western governments generally hate people new building new things. Whether its a renewable energy project, a fossil fuel plant, a housing development, etc. It's all the same problem.

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

#399

Post by pocksuppet »

4ndrewl wrote: post #89
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…

That's not how the international energy market works. You still have to buy your own, locally produced energy at international rates. The huge energy price spikes are down to wars in Ukraine (gas, which is also used for electricity production) and the Middle East.

You don't have to, but you make more profit if you do. An energy producer that has the choice to sell energy for a lower price domestically or a higher price internationally will obviously choose the higher price, but you can make laws to make that illegal, if you want to.

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

#400

Post by cozyman »

otherme123 wrote: post #356
htx80nerd wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT : "tell me about China use of coal energy" "China is by far the largest consumer and producer of coal in the world. Coal has historically been the backbone of China’s rapid industrialization and still plays a dominant role in its energy system." - ~55–60% of China’s electricity comes from coal (varies slightly year to year). - China consumes more coal than the rest of the world combined. - Annual consumption:…

Yes, China consumes a lot of coal. But they are trying to consume less. You cannot ask a developing country to go back on its merging into the first world by consuming less energy or investing in more expensive sources only. We westerners are here because we grew on cheap and dirty energy, what moral ground do we have to ask them to stop growing? Coal was almost 100% of China energy consumption only 15 years ago, wit…

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