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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)

#481

Post by linksnapzz »

ianburrell wrote: post #452
linksnapzz wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coal is cheap and abundant in the English Midlands, which explains much of the industrial revolution starting there. Said collieries, which if put back into service, would be able to cheaply get coal to Ireland via barge at no great cost or latency.

Coal was abundant. British coal was mined out. The coal that is left isn’t economical to mine.

People said the same thing about many gas & oil fields in the Permian Basin back in the '70s.

How'd that work out?

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

#482

Post by hihitsdumb »

reillyse wrote: post #361
bryanlarsen wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This. Fossil fuels are not cheap in Ireland, I think we only produce a small quantity of natural gas, everything else is imported. Ireland should be running towards renewables, we have no indigenous fossil fuels industry to lose and every watt we generate from renewables is money that stays in Ireland. We should be focused on reducing nimbyism and building out renewables.

What does the renewables supply chain look like? Do you build the systems right there in Ireland? Panels? Batteries? How does that money stay in Ireland?

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

#483

Post by Qwertious »

cguess wrote: post #347
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 Only if you ignore all externalities including: - environmental damage from mining (yes this exists for renewables too) - global warming - pollution on city infrastructure - pollution on health - the sunk costs causing higher transition costs when inevitably you transfer to renewables anyways.

>Only if you ignore all externalities

Not even then. Coal is dead, and gas killed it. The externalities are a distraction, coal plants are just straight-up uneconomic.

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

#484

Post by hihitsdumb »

Qwertious wrote: post #473
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 No it's not. I'm not talking about the environment either, coal plants are just straight-up more expensive than gas plants and renewables. Coal plants are necessarily steam turbines and not internal combustion, because coal is filthy and the mercury/sulfur/etc would wreck the guts of any machinery it goes through. Thus, it's only used to boil water. Gas turbines don't have that problem, so they spin th…

Nobody is building new coal plants...

...except China, who is building coal plants at a pace never seen in history. Are they dumb, or...?

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

#485

Post by linksnapzz »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #421
linksnapzz wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coal is cheap and abundant in the English Midlands, which explains much of the industrial revolution starting there. Said collieries, which if put back into service, would be able to cheaply get coal to Ireland via barge at no great cost or latency.

The UK's deep mines would be spectacularly uneconomic. Some have been sealed permanently (for expensive values of permanent) and the supporting knowledge and infrastructure would have to be rebuilt. Coal makes as much sense as a modern fuel as horse drawn buses do for transport.

...and, oddly enough, coal provides over half of China's electricity supply. I suppose nobody told them about the future, where bauxite reduction can be done w/ wind energy.

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

#486

Post by hihitsdumb »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #214
saltysalt wrote: post #203

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.

> 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…

Unless you manufacture it locally, with a fully local supply chain, wind and solar are still susceptible to world events.

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

#487

Post by hunterpayne »

sensanaty wrote: post #420
redeeman wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does this renewable policy of wind farms etc also extend to the rain forest being cut down for balsawood? or the landfilles the massive chunks of fiberglass coated wings then get put into? I guess we need a new planet when we're done filling it with junk and have depleted all the rain forest etc

Like fossil fuels are somehow ecologically clean and don't cause massive deforestation themselves? Sure, renewables aren't a silver bullet and there's a real conversation to be had about proper disposal of turbine blades and PV cells, but it's pretty convenient how that same scrutiny never seems to get applied to fossil fuels.

That's because the EROEI of FF are in the 100s. The EROEI of renewables is 4. I'm sorry that the laws of physics are inconvenient to your politics but they don't care about your politics (or mine).

If you want solar PV to help with AGW, they must be sited somewhere with an solar albino > .25. That's about Barcelona in Europe and SF in the US. If you put solar PV somewhere with less sun, you are actually making AGW worse.

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

#488

Post by tzs »

nxm wrote: post #78

[flagged]

1. Emissions matter, not the particular fuel source they come from. Most places cannot meet 100% of their needs, or even 100% of their growth in needs, with renewables so they must use and even grow some fossil fuel sources.

India has vast coal reservers, and is the second largest producer in the world, whereas they aren't a major oil producer. Hence they use coal. Similar with China.

If the story was about some country shutting down their last natural gas plant instead of their last coal plant, no doubt someone would be pointing out that meanwhile the US is increasing natural gas production at a record pace.

In 2025 the US added 7 GW of natural gas electricity capacity, and India added 7 GW of coal. Natural gas generates about 1/2 the CO2 as coal, but India has over 4x the population, so the US added about twice as much new emissions per capita.

But we also need to consider how much renewables were added. That will be part of point #3.

2. India's emissions are 2 tons per year per capita, which is under 1/2 of the global average, which is about 1/3 the EU average, 1/5 of China, and 1/7 of the USA. Even if it takes them longer to get off fossil fuels than the other large countries they are likely to never come near the emissions levels per capita of those other countries.

3. They are actually making better progress at this than most others. 50% of electricity used in India is renewable, compared to 25% in the US, 40% in China, and 47% in the EU.

They are not just adding coal. They are adding wind and solar at record paces too. In 2025 they added around 7 GW of coal capacity last year, 38 GW of solar, and 6 GW of wind.

The US is doing the same, but with natural gas rather than coal. 7 GW of natural gas, 25 GW of solar, 13 GW of wind. About the same percentage of renewables (~90%) as India.

4. Yes, per capita is the correct measure, because the atmosphere is very efficient at distributing CO2 emitted anywhere to everywhere. A ton of CO2 has the same impact no matter where it is emitted. Unless you can make a good argument that some people have some sort of natural or divine right to a bigger share of whatever CO2 budget we decide Earth can afford, it has to be per capita.

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

#489

Post by toraway »

linksnapzz wrote: post #479
ok_dad wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily solar panels work for 30+ years while coal works for only as long as you burn it. You can also recycle solar panels, but try reversing entropy to get your coal back and you’ll see what’s up. Cloudy days are solved by wind, ocean energy, geothermal, storage, etc.

"Cloudy days are solved by wind, ocean energy, geothermal, storage," Or, as Homer Simpson famously put it..."I dunno; Internet?" But seriously, there's no significant recycling of solar panels, coal extraction is a known process, and good luck running an industrial economy exclusively on renewables.

> storage

There’s the direct answer to your question, cost of installed grid battery storage are getting cheaper by the user and it’s completely viable option at present. It’s not some vague fantasy idea like power plants in space or something, just look at California’s energy mix during peaks that in just a few years has become dominated by solar+batteries.

For longer periods of low-sun in a climate like Ireland see the other renewable options he mentioned. Plus a couple natural gas plants for fallback that can comfortably sit idle until needed.

If some combo of renewables are used 90% of the time when possible, no one is going to be mad about modern clean-burning LNG plants compared to a toxic, expensive relic of the past like coal.

Current trends make it clear the future will be renewables, grid battery storage, and however many natural gas plants are needed for reliability based on local climate (plus keeping nuclear online if you already have it). And that “future” is pretty much here already in places like California.

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

#490

Post by belorn »

reillyse wrote: post #361
bryanlarsen wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This. Fossil fuels are not cheap in Ireland, I think we only produce a small quantity of natural gas, everything else is imported. Ireland should be running towards renewables, we have no indigenous fossil fuels industry to lose and every watt we generate from renewables is money that stays in Ireland. We should be focused on reducing nimbyism and building out renewables.

How close are Ireland to 100% wind during optimal weather?
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