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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)

#351

Post by Gravityloss »

amiga386 wrote: post #17
Gravityloss wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they selling to UK that AFAIU stopped building wind 10 years ago. Regulatory advantage...

You're mistaken. Onshore wind in England was de-facto but not de-jure banned by the Tories in 2018, due to a footnote inserted in their National Planning Policy Framework. Labour removed this footnote in 2024, immediately after winning the election. [0] Offshore wind was never affected, nor onshore wind in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. [0] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/policy-statement-...

Thanks, I was quite mistaken indeed! I wonder how much onshore England then affected the big picture.

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

#352

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

rsynnott wrote: post #238
saltysalt wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A LNG terminal would help. Lots of bad infrastructure decisions have left us extremely exposed to those external shocks you mentioned.

An LNG terminal wouldn't help with cost (it would probably increase it a bit, if anything, as the cost of building it would have to be paid back). It's desirable from an energy _security_ perspective; as it is we are very dependent on a pipeline to Britain.

Yeah, even though I voted (happily) for the Greens, I was very disappointed in them not building an LNG terminal, purely for energy security reasons. I'd be super happy if it never got used, but it's a cost worth paying just in case.

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

#353

Post by snake42 »

Zigurd wrote: post #143

Dirty power generation, and dirty toxic hazardous industry in general, discriminate against the poor and minorities. That carries an enormous social cost that goes uncounted in discussions like the ones on this thread. Nuclear discriminates against capitalism. The cost makes the choice of nuclear irrational. The inability to insure nuclear in the private market makes it a travesty of free markets.

The top comment currently on this post is talking about the cost impacts being transferred to the poor and middle class with lots of discussion. I think people are well aware of and discuss the social impacts.

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

#354

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

saltysalt wrote: post #264
rsynnott wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An LNG terminal wouldn't help with cost (it would probably increase it a bit, if anything, as the cost of building it would have to be paid back). It's desirable from an energy _security_ perspective; as it is we are very dependent on a pipeline to Britain.

Actually it should help with both, because a on-island terminal would also provide LNG storage capacity which would buffer short-term price fluctuations. We have zero such storage. Again, our poor decision making around national infrastructure is on our governments. They left have left us completely exposed to international markets.

A lot of it relates to the planning process, they do keep trying to build things. One could argue that this is also their fault (and I do!) but there are good historical reasons (cough ray burke cough michael lowry) why we've ended up with such a bureaucratic, byzantine planning process.

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

#355

Post by ljf »

linhns wrote: post #310
FrojoS wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The actual causes of electricity cost rises in Ireland being higher than Europe are Wrong comparison. Most of Europe has way too high electricity prices. It seems logical that ending the use of existing coal energy infrastructure puts upward pressure on prices. Coal is cheap, abundant, energy dense. Yes, burning coal causes lots of problems and I support ending it's use, but this is besides the point.

> Coal is cheap, abundant, energy dense. Nuclear defeats coal in all of these aspects, aside from the high upfront cost.

Upfront costs... then running costs (in the UK at least, it has to command a premium over other energy prices, to be profitable)... afterwards costs (in the UK no private company is on the hook for decommissioning their nuclear plants, the population will pick up that cost through taxes)...

But sure, nuclear is cheap if you ignore all those things.

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

#356

Post by otherme123 »

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:…

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, with a bit of hydro. Today they are very aggressively shifting towards anything but coal, as you found in ChatGPT, to less than 60% of coal in the mix. For comparison, the US is almost at the same point today than 15 years ago, only significantly replaced coal with more gas. A country that is consuming about the same amount of energy since 2000, while China consumes 5x.

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

#357

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #231
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…

> Ultimately though, the only way to fix this is to build a lot of wind (industrial scale) and solar (residential scale) as otherwise we're at the mercy of world events. I'd add that this is only part of the equation because: what do you do on an overcast day with no wind? You need significant storage capacity before you can become isolated from world events. Until then, you need power generation that you can bring o…

> I'd add that this is only part of the equation because: what do you do on an overcast day with no wind?

Battery technology is really, really getting there.

And in the absence of any more improvements here (unlikely) you integrate your grids with other countries. That's harder for Ireland, but it's still worth doing.

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

#358

Post by snake42 »

FpUser wrote: post #220

I think this is very strategically stupid decision (or crime committed by high management). Those should be preserved and be ready for use in case things go south which is not inconceivable judging by what is happening around Am am not against "saving planet" etc. Just make sure you still have a way to survive if high tech fails. Same as with let's abolish all cash without thinking what a nightmare it can / will caus…

From the article: the Moneypoint plant will continue to serve a limited backup role, burning heavy fuel oil under emergency instruction from Ireland’s transmission system operator EirGrid until 2029.

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

#359

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #240
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Over the last few years, we've graduated from providing cheap energy to now importing most of our energy. Back in days of yore (2006/07) I read a well-argued policy paper from a quango that no longer exists where it pointed out that Ireland was one of the most fossil fuel dependent nations in the world (particularly due to oil imports). Our energy prices first spiked around the same time, to "incentivise competitio…

Recent data on import depdency from a link someone posted: > Ireland's energy import dependency was 79.6% in 2024, up from 78.3% in 2023 (for comparison, the EU average for 2023 was 58.3%). > Ireland imported 100% of its oil, 79.5% of its gas, and 14.0% of its electricity in 2024.

Yup, things kinda suck because of our complete failure to get our fingers out here. Again, people keep trying to build better stuff, but the planning process and our very decentralised democratic processes don't. help.

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

#360

Post by moominpapa »

dewey wrote: post #324
moominpapa wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was Ireland's air particularly polluted?

The point isn't about Ireland specifically so don't get hung up on that. It's a general shift away from coal.

So are China, generally shifting away from coal?
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