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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)

#371

Post by lostlogin »

Dannymetconan wrote: post #204
Spooky23 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

21% of all energy is now being consumed by data centers with not enough investment in new forms of energy generation. This is a policy decision by the government. More realistically it is a decision to not proactively do anything and instead rely on market prices to encourage new entrants to the market. https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-dcmec/dat...

Would any free market proponent like to chime in here? Why hasn’t this occurred?

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

#372

Post by interludead »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #199
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…

> 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…

Generation technology got cheap quickly, but the grid expansion needed to support it moves at a much slower pace

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

#373

Post by marcosdumay »

baron816 wrote: post #344
bryanlarsen wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Coal is cheap, abundant, energy dense. Coal is neither cheap nor abundant in Ireland.

Coal also isn’t really energy dense since so much of the energy is wasted when converting to electricity

It is still one of the densest sources. It's just not as dense as it naively seems.

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

#374

Post by interludead »

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.

That's true to an extent, but it also sets a bar that almost no country could meet in a globalized economy

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

#375

Post by interludead »

CalRobert wrote: post #13

Great to see, hopefully they can end turf burning too. (For those unaware it's basically where you take a wetland habitat that's also an amazing carbon store, cut it in to chunks, dry it out, and burn it for a very dirty heat source)

Peat is probably the worst fuel from a carbon perspective

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

#376

Post by moominpapa »

Sebguer wrote: post #364
moominpapa wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are China, generally shifting away from coal?

yes: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/china-... do you have any other questions?

Yes, are China still building coal power stations? https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-china-is-still-bu...

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

#377

Post by JumpCrisscross »

a_paddy wrote: post #300
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 would make us more beholden to foreign powers.

> An LNG terminal would make us more beholden to foreign powers

This is a weird way to justify using LNG brought in through Britain.

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

#379

Post by dmitri1981 »

lostlogin wrote: post #371
Dannymetconan wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

21% of all energy is now being consumed by data centers with not enough investment in new forms of energy generation. This is a policy decision by the government. More realistically it is a decision to not proactively do anything and instead rely on market prices to encourage new entrants to the market. https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-dcmec/dat...

Would any free market proponent like to chime in here? Why hasn’t this occurred?

It's not a free market in Europe since there is vast amount of planning regulations involved etc. If you want to see free markets in action, look at the electricity prices in Texas, where ironically renewables are also the dominant source. https://www.gridstatus.io/live

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

#380

Post by pembrook »

macspoofing wrote: post #159
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.

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