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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)

#181

Post by coryrc »

AdamN wrote: post #171
Spooky23 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You would have to normalize against other costs and do a deep dive to really understand. My first question would be whether electricity (commercial and residential) has become relatively more expensive than gas, beer, and other commodities. If it's the same rate then it's more of an overall inflation thing. If electricity really is far and away higher than the rest over time then one would have to look at laws, the g…

The price of energy drives inflation. It shouldn't be going up if the claims the new source is cheaper is true (surprise, it's not.)

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

#182

Post by landl0rd »

empath75 wrote: post #174
landl0rd wrote: post #165

Ireland is a net energy importer who imports electricity from Great Britain. She, in turn, often imports from nations including France, Holland, and Denmark, who use coal power. As such, it's not really the whole story to call Ireland, "coal-free". It's the same as America outsourcing heavy manufacturing or chemicals to China and claiming environmental victory. It's true in a narrow construction of the concept; it do…

Ireland imports less than 10% of it's electricity from the UK. The UK _already_ decommissioned it's coal-based eletricity production. The UK imports roughly 14% of it's electricity, and most of those imports are from nuclear and hydro-electric power. Your entire comment is incredibly misleading.

No, it isn't. Power in a grid is fungible so grids operate based off consumption-based accounting. Britain continues to import at times from countries still burning coal. As such, Ireland is not free of coal dependence. It's really that simple. It is accurate for Ireland to say she no longer directly burns coal, no longer operates coal power, but the common understanding of "coal-free" is, "we are no longer directly dependent on coal for our lights to turn on." That simply isn't the case.

The way to think about this is, "If the grid had zero reserves and coal cut off, who could POSSIBLY go down?" You may figure this is constructed, but in a few days' dunkelflaute, Ireland needs her interconnects. Wind is then possibly low across much of Europe, meaning Holland and Germany ramp dispatchable capacity, including German lignite.

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

#183

Post by deanc »

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…

This is now how we should be looking at the problem. It doesn't matter if you burn coal yourself or not. What matters is the source of your energy. Every single one of those countries imports energy from other markets which consume fossil fuels for production.

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

#184

Post by pstuart »

blensor wrote: post #156
throw567643u8 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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…

There's plenty to criticize about China, but as far as energy production goes they are a leader and have demonstrated what can be done when the country is aligned (albeit by force in this case) to provide cheap and clean energy to power their economy.

The US, under the current admin, is literally the opposite of that.

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

#185

Post by deanc »

triceratops wrote: post #127
nxm wrote: post #78

[flagged]

Classic lie by omission. Or you're only reading right-wing media, in which case you can learn something and stop repeating this nonsense. In 2024 88% of new electricity in China came from renewables. https://www.eia.gov/international/analysis/country/chn They build new coal plants as a backup, or to replace existing older plants. But they're very clearly not using them more than they already were. They burn coal beca…

Unclear to me why you've been downvoted here. The data clearly shows that China is taking more serious action on this issue than any other developed or developing economy.

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

#186

Post by [deleted] »

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]

[deleted]

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

#187

Post by IrishTechie »

turtlesdown11 wrote: post #180
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…

> providing cheap energy to now importing most of our energy Source for this claim? figures show 10-15% of power is imported, not "most", and those fluctuate with wind generation.

Energy ≠ electricity

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

#188

Post by borvo »

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 true costs of the "cheap energy" were hidden. The high costs of the new approach are directly caused by policy decisions.

https://progressireland.substack.com/p/irish-electricity-is-...

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

#189

Post by renhanxue »

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.

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

#190

Post by encom »

landl0rd wrote: post #165

Ireland is a net energy importer who imports electricity from Great Britain. She, in turn, often imports from nations including France, Holland, and Denmark, who use coal power. As such, it's not really the whole story to call Ireland, "coal-free". It's the same as America outsourcing heavy manufacturing or chemicals to China and claiming environmental victory. It's true in a narrow construction of the concept; it do…

>[...]Denmark, who use coal power

Denmark has one coal fired power plant left, set to close in 2028.

https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/seneste/i-dag-lukker-og-slukker-et...

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