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Coal use in Germany has declined significantly over the last decade.
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)
#582Earlier quoted context omitted.
It should also be mentioned that despite being the factory of the world, China's CO2 emissions per capita are nearly half of the United States and comparable to some European countries.
> It should also be mentioned that despite being the factory of the world, China's CO2 emissions per capita are nearly half of the United States and comparable to some European countries. To be fair, there's a large (~300mn) agricultural population in China who don't use developed country levels of energy. Nonetheless, this is still good.
It’s amazing what freedom of movement and association can accomplish.
Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
#583All the green/peak-oil stuff is coming to a head with the Iran war.
(See for eg.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg )
All thanks to our Epstein-class-alien-AI-zionist-lizard overlords.
Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
#584https://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…
Moldova's coal plant is in Transnistria, a territory occupied by Russia. There are no phasing out plans because we have no control over it.
How is it "Moldova's" then
Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
#585Irish 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…
Look forward to the San Francisco upper class telling you how wrong you are about Irish energy and politics.
Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
#586They're going to regret this one when WW3 kicks off over the next year or three.
Good luck repairing your renewable energy infrastructure if you're hit by one of many different classes of attacks.
Coal and coal-burning energy production is an insurance policy, at the very least.
Countries have been getting rid of their oil refineries as well, and now look what is happening to those countries, given the Iran situation. Their price of fuel is skyrocketing, their reserves are dwindling, and panic is setting in. Hope is not a strategy.
Relying on third party supply chains for key infrastructure that would result in mass casualty if it were to vanish, is not intelligent. It's a vulnerability.
Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
#587Irish 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…
Same thing is happening in Australia. This is what happens when you vote socialists into power.
Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
#588Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here in England we now drag the coal over on smoke spewing ships from Japan and Australia, rather than mine it here. The sum total of CO2 is higher than if we just mined it here. Net zero box ticking.
We only use coal for steel. It's tiny. Ships are very efficient and our mines leak more methane than Aus ones, so the emissions are actually lower.
> Ships are very efficient
Per ton, yes. In practical, it’s far more complicated. Ships turn “heavy fuel oil” which is one tiny step from crude. It’s literally the byproduct that we have no better use for except for extremely large slow diesel engines.
If the tankers had to burn more useful fuel, we wouldn’t do it. The emissions on this unrefined bulk fuel is extremely bad.
Rail competes for efficiency depending on sea factors, and truck never does. But mining locally is far far more efficient that shipping literally to the other side of the world on ships that are burning 45 tons of fuel per day.
Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
#589Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody is building new coal plants... ...except China, who is building coal plants at a pace never seen in history. Are they dumb, or...?
Chinese state govt is building them in response to poorly thought out federal govt incentives. That plus backup plans (since China had plenty of coal but needs to import gas, so it could easily be navally blockaded by the US). Also gas turbines are a specialty of the West (which again doesn't work well geopolitically), and their demand has massively outstripped supply (we're even seeing jet engines being converted in…
Or perhaps they aren't drowning in propaganda (that they themselves promote in the West), and are happily reaping the rewards of cheap coal and energy production.
By the way, the round trip of: Sell and export your coal to manufacturers that burn that coal to produce electronic goods that produce energy, then buy that energy technology to power your own infrastructure, is certainly not cheaper than just burning the coal you mined yourself for your energy production.
Cheaper (ergo, more profitable) for the mining companies, yes. That's about it though.