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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)

#641

Post by tdb7893 »

hunterpayne wrote: post #507
bryanlarsen wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would only be true if solar panels had be trashed and repurchased every 6 months. But instead they last > 25 years, and can be recycled rather than trashed.

No, that's wishful thinking. You can have your own opinion, but not your own facts. Engineers actually calculate all this stuff. EROEI for instance means Energy Returned on Energy Invested. For renewables, its 4. That means under ideal conditions (albino of 1, 20 year lifetime), over the lifetime of the panel you get back 4x the energy that it took to extract the materials, make the panels and install them. So if you…

The ERoEI numbers seem to be under some dispute. This study estimates it at 9-10 in Switzerland.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151...

Also you mention albino and I can't find what that would mean in this context. At first I assumed you meant albedo but that doesn't seem to contextually match either. So I might just be misunderstanding your post.

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

#642

Post by renhanxue »

ggm wrote: post #593
renhanxue wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Sweden, the coal plants were exclusively for cogeneration (district heating with electricity as a byproduct) and only used as peaker plants in winter. Some of them still exist but have been converted to burn biofuels instead, mostly woodchips and other byproducts from the forestry industry. For most practical purposes, Swedish electricity generation has been basically fossile free since the 1980's.

I may be wrong, but I believe the british experience with biofuels is that although you want to believe its surplus byproduct, the cheapest source is often grown to be fuel for a biofuel generator. It's like soy/corn for ethanol, it isn't sufficiently profitable to do this solely with waste product, you get better margins growing to fulfill the contract.

That may be true in many places, but the Swedish forestry industry is very big, and the district heating plants really do burn mostly forestry byproducts. Of all the biofuel used in Sweden (not just for energy generation), 75% comes from forestry products, and the vast majority of it is either unrefined wood products or byproducts from Kraft process paper manufacturing (like tall oil and turpentine etc).

Specifically in district heating, 87% of the forestry-sourced fuel is unrefined wood products. Almost half of it is just bark, branches and treetops. Of all the biomass in an average mature tree logged in Sweden, 43% ends up as pulpwood, 43% as saw timber, 8% gets burned for fuel and the remaining 6% is treetops and branches which also tend to end up burned for fuel.

There is definitely a lot of debate in Sweden about sustainable forestry practices, though. The industry really wants to clearcut everything for convenience, but it's really bad for biodiversity and the general public hates it.

Source: the report Hållbarare biobränsle i fjärrvärmesektorn, Energiforsk 2023; specifically the charts on pages 14 and 15. Link: https://energiforsk.se/media/33316/2023-979-ha-llbarare-biob...

Addendum: I believe there's also been some studies and experiments involving importing olive pits from the Mediterranean olive oil industry for burning in district heating plants, but I don't think it's been done at scale.

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

#643

Post by NicuCalcea »

mmooss wrote: post #578
NicuCalcea wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moldova's coal plant is in Transnistria, a territory occupied by Russia. There are no phasing out plans because we have no control over it.

You could disconnect from it. That's much easier said than done and probably very complicated by the occupation, but I would guess that disconnecting would reduce coal consumption and greenhouse gas emissions proportionally to power usage.

Moldova has not purchased any energy from it since 2024.

I should also note it is primarily a gas plant, fuelled by extremely cheap (nearly free) gas subsidised by Russia. It only falls back to coal when supply is disrupted, which happened when Ukraine stopped transiting Russian gas on its territory.

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

#644

Post by NicuCalcea »

riffraff wrote: post #603
koakuma-chan wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it "Moldova's" then

Transnistria Is a breakaway country which is only recognized by Russia&friends. It is technically still considered Moldova by everyone else so it's not differentiated in documents from the EU and the likes.

It is not actually recognised by Russia either. It is in their best interest to maintain control over it, but officially recognise it as part of Moldova, so they can blackmail the entire country.

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

#645

Post by ZeroGravitas »

bocytron wrote: post #634
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An EV running half on coal is better than a gasoline car for carbon emissions. A similar story for heat pumps. China is more electrified than most Western nations and getting more so faster than Europe or the US: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-as-a-share-of...

> An EV running half on coal is better than a gasoline car for carbon emissions. Source? Does that take into account full life cycle (including manufacturing)?

https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/ev-fossil-cars-climate

This even compares cars built in an unrealistic 100% coal grid, and fuelled on 100% coal grid. Driving 14k miles a year for 10 years a Tesla Model 3 built under those extreme conditions beats a gas Fiat 500

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

#646

Post by bell-cot »

munk-a wrote: post #520
bell-cot wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iceland's situation - tiny population, geothermal paradise - may be difficult for 99% of the world's countries to replicate.

The US is in an excellent position to massively harness wind and solar and yet right now it's dialing up the coal usage. I am comfortable celebrating Iceland's decision to not be maliciously dependent on fossil fuels.

> ... celebrating Iceland's decision to not ...

Okay, but you're celebrating make-believe virtues. Iceland is also not destroying its tropical coral reefs. That sounds nice...but it has none. Nor any sort of tradition or incentive to try doing that.

The US coal thing is all about widespread memories (and myths) of sustained good economic times, in large areas of the country which now feel destitute. Millions of voters feeling that they have no future. If not that the elites want them to hurry up and die.

To paraphrase Munger - if you want different outcomes there, then you need to change the incentives.

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

#647

Post by knorker »

renhanxue wrote: post #189
bramhaag wrote: post #45

https://beyondfossilfuels.org/europes-coal-exit/ keeps track of coal phase-out commitments. 24 European countries still use coal generators, and 6 have not even planned to phase them out (Serbia, Moldova, Turkey, Poland, Kosovo, Bosnia). Never used coal power: Albania, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Switzerland, Norway Phased out: 2016: Belgium 2020: Sweden, Austria 2021: Portugal 2024: United…

For Sweden, the coal plants were exclusively for cogeneration (district heating with electricity as a byproduct) and only used as peaker plants in winter. Some of them still exist but have been converted to burn biofuels instead, mostly woodchips and other byproducts from the forestry industry. For most practical purposes, Swedish electricity generation has been basically fossile free since the 1980's.

> For most practical purposes, Swedish electricity generation has been basically fossile free since the 1980's.

I think "practical purposes" should include the fact that thanks to also shutting down a bunch of nuclear, Sweden regularly imports German/Polish coal power.

Sweden claiming fossile free is only technically true. Practically there's a mountain of greenwashing.

So no, I would not say what you just said. I find that greenwashing dishonest.

By being anti nuclear, the green parties around the world have caused more radiation[1] and climate changing co2 than any other movement in history.

[1] An oft cited statistic is that coal causes more deaths every single year from radiation (excluding accidents) than nuclear has has caused in its entire history INCLUDING accidents.

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

#648

Post by renhanxue »

knorker wrote: post #647
renhanxue wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Sweden, the coal plants were exclusively for cogeneration (district heating with electricity as a byproduct) and only used as peaker plants in winter. Some of them still exist but have been converted to burn biofuels instead, mostly woodchips and other byproducts from the forestry industry. For most practical purposes, Swedish electricity generation has been basically fossile free since the 1980's.

> For most practical purposes, Swedish electricity generation has been basically fossile free since the 1980's. I think "practical purposes" should include the fact that thanks to also shutting down a bunch of nuclear, Sweden regularly imports German/Polish coal power. Sweden claiming fossile free is only technically true. Practically there's a mountain of greenwashing. So no, I would not say what you just said. I fi…

I mean, you can call it a "mountain" of greenwashing but to me it looks more like a mole hill. Total Swedish electricity production is typically 160 to 165 TWh per year and total consumption is usually between 135 and 145 TWh.

In 2025, the net export was about 33 TWh. Gross import from Germany, Poland and Lithuania, including transit to other countries, was 1 TWh. So, imported power from countries with coal power plants was less than 1% of total consumption, and the amount of fossil free power exported was more than 30 times greater than the amount of (potentially) fossil power imported. 1-2% fossil energy in the mix is to me not really significant, and especially not considering how much fossil free power is exported.

Sources:

Statistics Sweden table of power import and export: https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/statistik-efter-amne/ener...

Basic information about Swedish power generation: https://www.energiforetagen.se/energifakta/elsystemet/produk...

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

#649

Post by api »

dgacmu wrote: post #72
api wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steel is also a small percentage of coal use. The vast majority of coal is used for electricity generation.

Putting numbers on that (for the us) from 2022 [1]: Electric power—469.9 MMst—91.7% Industrial total—41.9 MMst—8.2% Industrial coke plants—16.0 MMst—3.1% Industrial combined heat and power—10.1 MMst—2.0% Other industrial—15.8 MMst—3.1% Commercial—0.8 MMst—0.2% Getting down to 6% of our current coal use would be amazing. So much lung cancer and asthma would be prevented. [1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/coal/us…

Replacing all coal for electricity and leaving industry alone would be a gigantic dent in carbon emissions. Just that.

Even if some of that replacement is with gas it still helps. Gas emits about half the carbon per kWh.

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

#650

Post by Gasp0de »

mastermage wrote: post #608
macspoofing wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No country will be truly coal-free Being coal-free is possible. Being fossil-fuel free is harder. Most of Irish energy comes from Natural Gas and Oil - the former is what supplanted Coal, not Wind.

Gas is kinda easier to replace though. As you can burn other Gases instead of Natural Gases with a few modifications to the Powerplant.

Natural Gas is such a weird PR term coined by fossil industry. I think the term "fossil gas" is much clearer.
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