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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)

#151

Post by triceratops »

throw567643u8 wrote: post #115
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…

[flagged]

> Web search how many Chinese coal plants came online in the last six months.

I did and it was actually very few. In 2024 88% of new electricity in China came from solar and wind. https://www.eia.gov/international/analysis/country/chn

You should try doing some research instead of lying.

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

#152

Post by elAhmo »

s_dev wrote: post #148
elAhmo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wondered why someone decides to post something fairly old, as this is 'not really news' given it is so old.

It's not that old in the context of energy generation which operates over years and decades.

It is old in context of an event happening and we are being informed of it a year later, regardless of how 'slow moving' the underlying thing is.

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

#153

Post by elAhmo »

DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #55
elAhmo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wondered why someone decides to post something fairly old, as this is 'not really news' given it is so old.

It's new to me. Also is not even a year old, should we only allow info from the last week?

Not everyone is supposed to read every single news. There will always be someone who didn't see it, but that is not my point.

It would feel weird to see this as a headline on a newspaper or on TV today, but maybe that is just me and people like to read new that are from last year.

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

#154

Post by bryanlarsen »

thunfischtoast wrote: post #128
throw567643u8 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> they know windpower and solar are not viable long term Why?

Steelman: in the 2000's and 2010's China did not know if wind power and solar were viable in the long term. They put a lot of money in wind & solar, but also lots of alternatives: nuclear, coal, hydro, geothermal.

By 2020 it was obvious that wind & solar were viable long term, so investments in nuclear et al dried up. But they weren't convinced that batteries were viable long term, so they built a lot of coal peakers for night power.

By 2025 it became obvious that batteries were more viable and cheaper than coal peakers, so they've started to build battery storage at a vast scale.

So steelman is that the OP's viewpoint is ~10 years out of date.

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

#155

Post by julkali »

Spooky23 wrote: post #146
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…

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

because you start internalizing costs

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

#156

Post by blensor »

throw567643u8 wrote: post #115
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…

[flagged]

I did not expect HN to become this geopolitical.

And are you sure about your claim? Every time I hear anything about China and Solar the core of it is that solar in China is growing more than anywhere else on the planet ( 40% increase in 2025 and creating ~11% of China's energy already )

And that there is no sign of that trend slowing down anytime soon. And why would it. Solar panels are dirt cheap and they have more than enough space for it.

China is also really strong in the battery space, so they have everything they need to ditch oil/coal eventually

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

#157

Post by [deleted] »

jahnu wrote: post #94
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…

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…

[deleted]

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

#158

Post by ben_w »

panick21_ wrote: post #103
wolvoleo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably but damage from nuclear accidents isn't only measured in deaths. No coal plant accident has caused an exclusion zone for 40 years.

Most of the exclusion zone is political nonsense. And overall coal has made much more areas much worse to live in. I rather live in the exclusion zone then next many coal plants. Also there is a single case that happened from a non-western design. When looking at western countries like France, it shows how incredibly safe the whole industry is end to end.

Chernobyl's political nonsense was mostly down to the USSR wanting to deny that anything had, or possibly could, go wrong; if anything, the exclusion zone is the opposite of the western nonsense about nuclear power.

It's our unique freedom-themed nonsense, not the Soviet dictatorial-nonsense, which means we have radiation standards strict enough that it's not possible to convert a coal plant into a nuclear plant without first performing a nuclear decontamination process due to all the radioisotopes in the coal.

That said, perhaps that's actually a problem with the coal plants rather than nuclear standards: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-69285-4

> When looking at western countries like France, it shows how incredibly safe the whole industry is end to end.

Relative to coal, absolutely. But don't assume western countries are immune to propaganda on these things, nuclear reactors are there for the spicy atoms, not the price tag or public safety.

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

#159

Post by macspoofing »

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.

>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.

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

#160

Post by jahnu »

Spooky23 wrote: post #146
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…

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 endlessly fascinating and also one of the really positive stories in the world right now which can help balance your emotions in a sometimes depressing world. At least for me it does.

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