Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

pv-magazine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 712 posts

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

#561

Post by uriahlight »

deanc wrote: post #172
21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-coal-plant-t... They have more coal power plants planned and your data hickup worked out during recensions and covid.

As other posters below you have pointed out, it's not as simple as you make it out. You can't just stop building power plants overnight. The population and demands of China are growing and those needs need to be met immediately. There is no simpler, more understood way of rolling out new energy than building coal & gas power plants. But look at the data. They are building clean energy solutions at a faster rate than…

[flagged]

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

#562

Post by bryanlarsen »

Spooky23 wrote: post #523
zahlman wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... So then why isn't the solar to replace the more expensive plants getting built?

Solar is best used to take care of peak summer demand. It’s not gonna displace coal plants which tend to make up base load.

Base generation is a cost optimization that's been irrelevant ever since peaking plants became cheaper to operate than continuous operation plants. Any grid that can handle peak loads can also handle base loads.

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

#563

Post by NoLinkToMe »

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.

True.

But: EU is the only effective player in the world that drives energy policy outside its borders, by being a massive market with regulatory power regarding its imports.

If you look at three figures: energy use per capita, emissions per capita, and GDP per unit of energy/emissions, and include imported consumption, the EU's are all trending in a positive direction for many years now.

So stating the EU has de-industralized and its progress on shutting down coal is therefore 'fake' and misleading because it imports its industrial consumption from other countries to which it has simply offloaded its emissions, isn't true.

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

#564

Post by Qwertious »

hihitsdumb wrote: post #484
Qwertious wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Coal is cheap No it's not. I'm not talking about the environment either, coal plants are just straight-up more expensive than gas plants and renewables. Coal plants are necessarily steam turbines and not internal combustion, because coal is filthy and the mercury/sulfur/etc would wreck the guts of any machinery it goes through. Thus, it's only used to boil water. Gas turbines don't have that problem, so they spin th…

Nobody is building new coal plants... ...except China, who is building coal plants at a pace never seen in history. Are they dumb, or...?

Chinese state govt is building them in response to poorly thought out federal govt incentives. That plus backup plans (since China had plenty of coal but needs to import gas, so it could easily be navally blockaded by the US). Also gas turbines are a specialty of the West (which again doesn't work well geopolitically), and their demand has massively outstripped supply (we're even seeing jet engines being converted into gas turbines) and the order backlog is years out - all of which doesn't jive with China's "build everything right f'n now" strategy.

China is building everything at a pace never before seen in history. Partly because their construction industry is a jobs program, and their economy is so dependent on it that they prefer building things at a loss rather than not building at all. Which is financially dumb, but welcome to politics.

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

#565

Post by bryanlarsen »

pembrook wrote: post #528
bryanlarsen wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many consider natural gas to be worse than coal due to widespread methane leakage and methane being a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.

[flagged]

Most methane leakage is in Russia. Good luck making and enforcing better standards there.

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

#566

Post by thorncorona »

Jblx2 wrote: post #447
deanc wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As other posters below you have pointed out, it's not as simple as you make it out. You can't just stop building power plants overnight. The population and demands of China are growing and those needs need to be met immediately. There is no simpler, more understood way of rolling out new energy than building coal & gas power plants. But look at the data. They are building clean energy solutions at a faster rate than…

>The population and demands of China are growing The population of China has been decreasing since 2022. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=population+of+china+is+decr...

The percentage of China in extreme poverty has been decreasing for the last few decades.

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

#567

Post by triceratops »

hihitsdumb wrote: post #486
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #214

Earlier 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…

Unless you manufacture it locally, with a fully local supply chain, wind and solar are still susceptible to world events.

Is someone turning off the wind and sun? Once the infrastructure is installed it produces energy for years. Solar panels aren't burned to make energy, like oil or gas are. And you can recycle them.

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

#568

Post by triceratops »

cbeach wrote: post #552
triceratops wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> externalities associated with mining materials to manufactur solar panels and wind turbine Solar panels can be recycled, so eventually they will need very little mining. Have you ever recycled gasoline? Have you ever heard of the Deepwater Horizon ? I think you're being disingenuous while accusing others.

Even if all the solar panels in the world were recycled, you’ve barely scratched the surface of the points I made.

You haven't made any.

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

#569

Post by [deleted] »

htx80nerd wrote: post #334
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…

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:…

[deleted]

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

#570

Post by glenstein »

brohee wrote: post #317
catlifeonmars wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s wrong with nuclear energy?

Not cost competitive with solar+batteries in many locales (less so the closer to the poles), and no learning curve, if anything a negative learning curve, nuclear never was more expensive than new nuclear. And off course societal (and geopolitical) acceptance issues.

>And off course societal (and geopolitical) acceptance issues.

Right. One thing I've rarely heard emphasized is that, while nuclear power is not at all the same as nuclear weapons, it's still infrastructure that can be repurposed from one to the other. A world where nuclear is the predominant base load power source is a world where nuclear weapons are more accessible due to the proliferation of sibling technologies.

Post reply on HN