Discussion

Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe

cbdevidal: Just in time for an energy crisis :-)

redfloatplane: (June 2025)

rwmj: They'd be better off with (and are building out) offshore and onshore wind. If you've ever been to the west coast of Ireland you'll know they've got almost unlimited wind energy. The country is targeting 5GW of capacity by 2030 and 37GW in the distant future[1].If only they could harness the power of rain, Ireland would truly be an energy superpower.[1] https://www.irishtimes.com/special-reports/2025/10/30/winds-...

philipwhiuk: Maybe the difference is made up by renewables and not oil?

ben_w: > If only they could harness the power of rain, Ireland would truly be an energy superpower.I know this is in jest, but that's basically "dam up some valley rivers and put a hydroelectric generator on the end", and unfortunately Ireland isn't so good for that.(Hydro as a battery is easier and works in far more locations, but that's not harnessing the power *of rain*).But yes, Ireland and the UK have an absolutely huge wind power resource available around them, IIRC enough to supply all of Europe if the grid connections were there to export it all.

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

hvb2: Uh? No they didn't stop at all?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_Kingd...

rithdmc: Natural gas is still the leader by a good margin.

citrin_ru: Tories during 2015-2023 made construction of new onshore wind farms all but impossible (removed subsidies and made planning permissions very difficult). I would assume Labor could reverse these polices but haven't seen anything in news about this.

trollbridge: It isn’t.

CalRobert: 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)

rithdmc: I don't think turf (peat) has been burned for energy generation since 2023.

elAhmo: I always wondered why someone decides to post something fairly old, as this is 'not really news' given it is so old.

amiga386: Now you have: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/08/... (2024)Also https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/14/offshore...Also https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/feb/10/uk-onshore-...

amiga386: 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-...

CalRobert: True, I was referring to domestic heat in rural areas.

redfloatplane: I think that's going to be very, very hard to sell to many people here in rural Ireland (Roscommon in my case). I would really love to see people stop burning turf but it's such a strong cultural thing that in some parts you'd be ostracised for even thinking the thought.I've personally spoken to people (who are otherwise quite environmentally aware) who suggest they'd never vote for the Green Party because they'd take their turf away. It's a tough sell.

reedf1: 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.

otherme123: Leading is not the same as replacing. See this figure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Ireland#/media/File:...In 2000, coal was about 20% of the energy mix, gas another 20%, oil about 50%. Wind was 0%. In 2024 coal was about 2%, gas still 20%, oil still 50%, but wind grew to about 15%. It seems that wind actually replaced coal. It is not only logical, but good, that wind first replaced coal (dirtiest), and maybe from now on is will start to replace oil. Only after many decades, or maybe never, gas will be replaced.

aurareturn: I agree. Whenever numbers show that China is the largest CO2 polluter currently, it needs to be mentioned that China manufactures much of the world's physical goods.

piokoch: If you use Renewable Energy Sources, it may happen there will be no wind or no sun. So you need some auxiliary source of energy. If you want it at hand, this must be something with fast cold start. So black/brown coal power plan will not help you, similarly nuclear. You need to burn either gas or "biomass", that is wood/turf, etc. Those power plants have about 1h cold start.Hence, in order to have RES you need to emit CO2. Deal with this. The other option, and UK goes that way, is to purchase electricity when it is lacking, paying spot prices, that's why they have such a big electricity bills, economy is down, people get mad and vote psychos.The solution is dead simple, as France example shows. Simply use nuclear power plants and does not bother with RES, as it does not make any sense now.Maybe, when we have technology to store efficiently electricity at scale, we can start using RES. But we just do not have that.The end result now is that electricity in Europe is the most expensive on the World, so all manufacturing is moved to Asia, who does not bother with climate that much, that's why, despite all Europe efforts, overall CO2 emission keeps growing.

eitau_1: Damn, and my country consumes 11 million out of 13 million tonnes of coal used for heating houses in the entire EU.

oezi: Tell me where you are from without telling me where you are from...Poland I guess?

secondcoming: Can't beat a good turf fire though!

rithdmc: I'm not sure where that data comes from. Oil was only around 3% in 2024.https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/electr...

bananzamba: Air quality will improve, just not CO2

redfloatplane: Your username made me chuckle!

rithdmc: ;) thanks.

madaxe_again: Steel is the tough one - the vast majority of new steel is produced using blast furnaces and coke. DRI is still a fringe product.I mean, the UK proudly trumpets that they're coal-free, while entertaining a new coking coal mine.

cogman10: China's CO2 emissions have been falling for the last 2 years, even as they've increased their manufacturing capacity.https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...

mohatmogeansai: very funny

happymellon: And a lot of offshore was consteucted during that period.So still claiming that we didn't build any wind power was false.

bramhaag: 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 Kingdom 2025: Ireland Phase-out planned: 2026: Slovakia, Greece 2027: France 2028: Italy, Denmark 2029: The Netherlands, Hungary, Finland 2030: Spain, North Macedonia 2032: Romania 2033: Slovenia, Czechia, Croatia 2035: Ukraine 2038: Germany 2040: Bulgaria 2041: Montenegro

troupo: > this must be something with fast cold start. So black/brown coal power plan will not help you, similarly nuclear.Nuclear plants provide base load and they are extremely fast at ramping up/lowering production. All modern nuclear plants are capable of changing power output at 3-5% of nameplate capacity per minute: https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12...You don't shut down power plants. None of the power plants ever do a "fast cold start"> The end result now is that electricity in Europe is the most expensive on the World, so all manufacturing is moved to AsiaThe production moved to Asia due to extremely cheap labor, not due to electricity costs.

adgjlsfhk1: energy vs electricity. oil is a much bigger part of the energy mix due to chemical manufacturing

clickety_clack: Ireland briefly had the biggest hydroelectric dam in the world until the Hoover dam was built… but that was before electricity production really took off. Ireland doesn’t really have the geography for dams, the hills and rivers are far too small.

DonsDiscountGas: It's new to me. Also is not even a year old, should we only allow info from the last week?

einr: No, it's not?https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/interactive-publications/e... crude oil and petroleum products (37.7%) natural gas (20.4%) renewable energy (19.5%) solid fuels (10.6%) nuclear energy (11.8%) (2023 numbers)So natural gas was just barely more than renewables in 2023, but according to the source below the line was crossed in 2025 and renewables now provide more than all fossil fuels put together:https://electrek.co/2026/01/21/wind-and-solar-overtook-fossi...

rithdmc: I think the domestic heating use is a drop in the bucket compared to commercial extraction of peat for export, or historical use for electricity generation.I've only so many shits to give, and people heating their homes doesn't rank.

DamonHD: People heating their homes can be very sigificant. In the UK ~15% of all its territorial GHGs come from heating with gas: actual CO2 from the home boiler flues.CO2 from small amounts of rural home heating is probably not the big thing to be worried about, especially if local recent biomass, eg wood from forest management. But there are still nasties (PMs, biodiversity losses, etc) to be considered and that should be dealt with in due course.

cogman10: At least in 2004 (not sure if it's still the case) there are some homes which still burned coal for heat. That is the nastiest smell out there.

aurareturn: I wonder if on-shorting manufacturing would mean a higher increase in CO2 because China is leading the world in green energy creation.

jamesblonde: There has been a lot of proposals to dam up massive unpopulated sea-facing valleys in Mayo and Donegal and use pumped hydro with seawater. Was a bit topic 15 years ago, but never happened. All that happened was the silvermines pump hydro plant that seems behind schedule.Prof Igor Shvets was behind this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_Ireland

madaxe_again: Pumped storage hydro is extremely cheap and efficient and has been around for more than a century. LiFePo4 batteries are now cheap enough that they're a cost-competitive alternative. Flywheel storage plugs the inertia gap nicely.The tech exists - it's mostly just a matter of political will. The economics already justify it. People are making considerable money by starting up BESSs (Battery Energy Storage Systems) and doing time arbitrage on energy.cf. Iberia, who recently learned that effective storage and intertial pick-up is integral to a stable and efficient power network, and are now spending heavily on both.

troupo: Cheap as in "requires proper location and the destruction of ecology on large scale" cheap?Edit:https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/energy-storage-ana...To cover Europe's need you only need to build 70 1.5 GW hydroelectric stations at a cost of $92 billion (in reality much higher) while greatly damaging ecology in large areas.(The link has rather detailed info)

einr: 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.

api: Steel is also a small percentage of coal use. The vast majority of coal is used for electricity generation.

ceejayoz: Somehow that’s an often missed aspect of this. Yeah, ditching coal has a wide array of nice side effects. It has killed many, many more than the world’s nuclear accidents.

nixass: Coal probably kills more people in a single day than all nuclear accidents ever combined

womble2: Not only has the UK not stopped building wind, they have over 30GW of installed wind capacity and sell electricity to Ireland for most of the year.

talideon: The 'sell electricity to Ireland' bit here is doing an awful lot of work. It's more complicated than that.For those who don't know, Ireland operates an all-island grid, and EirGrid (the grid operator for the Republic) owns SONI (the grid operator for Northern Ireland). That means that 'UK' and 'Ireland' in this has a large Northern Ireland shaped lump of ambiguity that statement.

rsanek: There are existing metrics that adjust for this. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-emissions...

dgacmu: Putting numbers on that (for the us) from 2022 [1]:Electric power—469.9 MMst—91.7%Industrial total—41.9 MMst—8.2% Industrial coke plants—16.0 MMst—3.1% Industrial combined heat and power—10.1 MMst—2.0% Other industrial—15.8 MMst—3.1% Commercial—0.8 MMst—0.2%Getting down to 6% of our current coal use would be amazing. So much lung cancer and asthma would be prevented.[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/coal/use-of-coal.php

wolvoleo: Probably but damage from nuclear accidents isn't only measured in deaths. No coal plant accident has caused an exclusion zone for 40 years.

cauliflower99: 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 stupid, politically incentivised initiatives - congratulations to us on making the poor and middle-classes poorer.But it's all good - we're saving the world I guess. The poor folks can sort themselves out.

nixass: Germany on the other hands..

brazzy: ...has been massively reducing its usage of coal (down almost 40% since 2011) and committed to phase it out entirely by 2038.

jerven: Primary energy compared to electricity as energy. The first adds energy used in driving, chemical industry etc. the second is just the amount of electricity generated.

rithdmc: Got it, thanks. So, not for grid electricity, as in this discussion.

rithdmc: The actual quantity of people burning turf for home heat is tiny, though.

rowanajmarshall: Europe is a gigantic manufacturer of vast quantities of goods. It has not deindustrialised at all.

throw567643u8: 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.

stephen_g: > If you use Renewable Energy Sources, it may happen there will be no wind or no sunI still find it staggering that people feel like this is something that needs to be said as if it’s surprising or a novel idea. Do you really believe smart people haven’t been working through these challenges for decades?

copper4eva: Did he state it like it's a surprise? Not like there's anything wrong with bringing up this fact.

Timon3: Yet somehow we don't need a similar reminder for the possibility of fossil fuel power plants running out of fuel after a short time if not regularly restocked. Why is it worth bringing up one, but not the other?

brnt: I understand that American shale gas (the largest fraction of LNG imports to the EU) is by certain measures as polluting as coal. If correct, Europe needs to reconsider if the price (and political) volatility is really worth it.

4ndrewl: That's not how the international energy market works. You still have to buy your own, locally produced energy at international rates.The huge energy price spikes are down to wars in Ukraine (gas, which is also used for electricity production) and the Middle East.

bengale: I'm not sure it's fair to give Germany too much grief on this front. They are actively destroying their industrial base in a desire to hit net-zero.

brynnbee: If you look at net damage to the planet, fossil fuel burning energy sources kill literally 8 million+ people a year. Coal plants are vastly more radioactive than nuclear plants, and the effects of burning coal will have a vastly outsized share of damage to the planet in the long than nuclear. Its effects are just less concentrated to a single area.

crote: > Nuclear plants provide base load and they are extremely fast at ramping up/lowering productionThe obvious counterexample is Chernobyl, where a big contributor was the fact that they were unable to scale it down & back up as desired. Yes, nuclear reactors can scale down rapidly - but you have to wait several hours until it can scale back up!Besides, the linked paper only covers load-following in a traditional grid (swinging between 60% and 100% once a day) and barely touches on the economic effects. The situation is going to look drastically different for a renewables-first grid, where additional sources are needed for at most a few hours a day, for a few months per year.> You don't shut down power plants. None of the power plants ever do a "fast cold start"Gas turbines can. Hydro can. Battery storage can.

s_dev: Also the fact that it greatly lessens energy dependence should not be understated.

s_dev: https://www.smartgriddashboard.com/roi/Here is the dashboard for electricity in Ireland.Ireland is not industrialised in a similar way to other EU countries like Germany which has heavy manufacturing. Irish industry is mostly composed of US pharmaceuticals and data centres occupying much of the demand. There is a bauxite facility in limerick which does come to mind but that sort of thing isn't common in Ireland.

throw567643u8: Taiwan and perhaps other Asian countries that successfully make stuff don't expose their industries to this, the government sets a fixed energy price for them rather than leaving them at the whim of speculators.

jahnu: 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 wrong on the facts views.

throw567643u8: > Ireland partly got rich by being a massive CO2 polluter per capita.This argument that we have to self destruct to have the moral highground just keeps getting repeated, for maybe two decades now.We, as in the West, got there first because we are luckier/better organised/evil colonialists/whatever, take your pick it doesn't matter.China DGAF about our self perceived virtuousness, they know windpower and solar are not viable long term, they're just happy to sell us more panels and propellers like any other widget from a factory with a profit margin. Web search how many Chinese coal plants came online in the last six months.

rsynnott: We never had particularly cheap energy. The recent increases in energy cost were largely driven by gas price increases due to the war in Ukraine.> we've graduated from providing cheap energy to now importing most of our energy.... Eh? We've always imported most of our energy. Or, well, okay, since about the mid 19th century we've imported most of our energy. All coal used in Moneypoint was imported. We do produce some of our own gas, but it is not and never has been enough. The fraction of energy that we import has actually fallen somewhat due to wind and solar.

jahnu: I think they should be allowed for cultural reasons but only if cut by hand like we did when I was a kid :)

crote: > If you use Renewable Energy Sources, it may happen there will be no wind or no sun.Yes, but this rarely happens, so any potential solution should be designed around it being idle 99% of the time.> Those power plants have about 1h cold start.Gas turbines can spin up significantly faster. However, the weather is quite predictable, so it is unlikely that this will be needed. Besides, battery storage is the perfect solution as an ultra-fast ramp-up holdover source until the turbines are at 100%.> Hence, in order to have RES you need to emit CO2.Or you equip the handful of gas turbines you use to make up for that 1% gap in renewables with carbon capture? It's not ideal, but it is very much doable.> Simply use nuclear power plants and do not bother with RES... and have your electricity be even more expensive?

21asdffdsa12: https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-coal-plant-t...They have more coal power plants planned and your data hickup worked out during recensions and covid.

triceratops: In 2024, well after Covid, 88% of new electric capacity added in China came from renewables.https://www.eia.gov/international/analysis/country/chnTheir existing grid uses coal because they have coal, just like the US uses gas because it has gas. And obviously as old coal plants are retired they're going to build new ones. They don't use the new plants for additional capacity. As they add more solar and storage, which they're building a lot of, they're going to absolutely crush the coal burning too. It's literally a national security issue for them.

s_dev: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China>"China is the world's top electricity producer from renewable energy sources. China's renewable energy capacity is growing faster than its fossil fuels and nuclear power capacity.[1] China installed over 373 GW of renewables in 2024, reaching a total installed renewable capacity of 1,878 GW by the end of the year. The country aims to have 80% of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060, and achieve a combined 1,200 GW of solar and wind capacity by 2030.[1]>Although China currently has the world's largest installed capacity of hydro, solar and wind power, its energy needs are so large that some fossil fuel sources are still used."Seems more renewables came online than non-renewables, perhaps your take is outdated?

thunfischtoast: > they know windpower and solar are not viable long termWhy?

nxm: Meanwhile China and India are building out coal plants at record pace

triceratops: 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/chnThey 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.India is not doing as well as China but it is still improving. In 2024 64% of electricity growth came from coal, but that's down from 91% in 2023. https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/india/I think they'll follow China's lead soon. The economics are inevitable. Ember projects India will be at 42% renewable electricity by 2030, up from 10% today. This is obviously staggering renewables growth in a poor country.The same source projects the US will be at 59% by then https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/united-states... and it's already at 58% today. So basically 0 renewables growth in the richest country in the world.Both India and China lack oil. Reducing fossil fuel usage is a national security issue for them. They're also poorer. As solar and wind become the cheapest sources of electricity, thanks mostly to China, they're going to rapidly transition. No dumb political games.

sunaookami: Why even make it about nuclears vs coal? Both are bad, both are hazards and both are not green energy.

ceejayoz: Because people are petrified of nuclear but fine with coal. The opposite should be true.I don’t think nuclear is the answer to things. But replacing every ounce of coal used for fuel with nuclear would still be a win.

rsynnott: > Are they selling to UK that AFAIU stopped building wind 10 years ago.... Eh? No it didn't; not sure where you got that.Ireland and the UK sell power to each other on a demand basis, though in practice Ireland is usually a net importer: https://www.smartgriddashboard.com/all/interconnection/?dura...

crote: China is building solar panels at a record pace, and building wind turbines at a record pace, and building nuclear power plants at a record pace. Meanwhile, the construction rate of coal plants has been dropping over the last decade and a half.

jillesvangurp: This doesn't mean what you think it does:- China is also decommissioning older plants.- These new coal plants aren't running 24x7- Peak coal usage is likely to be very soon in China (this year even according to some); after that coal usage flatten and start declining; all the way to a planned net zero in the 2060s.The newer plants are designed to be more efficient, more flexible, and less polluting than the older ones. They are better at starting/stopping quickly/cheaply. Older coal plants used big boilers that had to heat up to build up steam before being able to generate power. This makes stopping and starting a plant slow and expensive. Because they consume a lot of fuel just to get the plant to the stage where it can actually generate power. The more often plants have to be stopped and started, the more wasteful this is. With the newer plants this is less costly and faster.This makes them more suitable to be used in a non base load operational model where they can be spun up/down on a need to have basis. This is essential in a power grid that is dominated by the hundreds of GW of solar, wind, and battery.

Imustaskforhelp: Respectfully, Can you tell me more about it because I genuinely don't know how you think Nuclear energy is bad. It's one of the cleanest forms of energy.Is there any particular reason why you think Nuclear is bad in all honesty as its worth having a discussion here? Why do you feel Nuclear Energy is a hazard?I understand if you feel Chernobyl or any event makes it sound dangerous but rather, Please take a look at this data on the number of death rates per unit of electricity production[0]Oil is roughly 615x more deadly than nuclear. Nuclear, Solar and Wind (the renewables) are all less deadly and are 0.03,0.02 and 0.04 respectively and nuclear is a reliable source of energy source which can be used in actual generation.Nuclear is very much a green energy. I'd like to hear your opinion about it.[0]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

capitol_: Typically markets are good at optimizing everything that is priced into the market.Long term price stability is currently not something that is optimized for.One way to solve it is of course abandoning the ide of a market economy for power.Another is to let those industries that need price stability buy that on the futures market.

panick21_: Most of the exclusion zone is political nonsense. And overall coal has made much more areas much worse to live in. I rather live in the exclusion zone then next many coal plants.Also there is a single case that happened from a non-western design. When looking at western countries like France, it shows how incredibly safe the whole industry is end to end.

ben_w: Chernobyl's political nonsense was mostly down to the USSR wanting to deny that anything had, or possibly could, go wrong; if anything, the exclusion zone is the opposite of the western nonsense about nuclear power.It's our unique freedom-themed nonsense, not the Soviet dictatorial-nonsense, which means we have radiation standards strict enough that it's not possible to convert a coal plant into a nuclear plant without first performing a nuclear decontamination process due to all the radioisotopes in the coal.

blensor: 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 than enough space for it.China is also really strong in the battery space, so they have everything they need to ditch oil/coal eventually

Spooky23: If this stuff is cheaper, why are prices going up?

julkali: because you start internalizing costs

bryanlarsen: Steelman: in the 2000's and 2010's China did not know if wind power and solar were viable in the long term. They put a lot of money in wind & solar, but also lots of alternatives: nuclear, coal, hydro, geothermal.By 2020 it was obvious that wind & solar were viable long term, so investments in nuclear et al dried up. But they weren't convinced that batteries were viable long term, so they built a lot of coal peakers for night power.By 2025 it became obvious that batteries were more viable and cheaper than coal peakers, so they've started to build battery storage at a vast scale.So steelman is that the OP's viewpoint is ~10 years out of date.

moooo99: Mostly because marginal pricing/merit order.In a vast over simplfication, the most expensive producer that gets to supply sets the overall price. So even if you supply 99% from wind and hydro, the 1% of power that comes from gas sets the price for 100% of the electricity in the market.When gas gets more expensive, electricity from gas gets more expensive. The more you have to rely on gas (because you don‘t have batteries, not enough solar, etc), the more you pay high prices.There are different ways to address these issues. Demand side load management, batteries, etc.

deanc: As other posters below you have pointed out, it's not as simple as you make it out. You can't just stop building power plants overnight. The population and demands of China are growing. But look at the data. They are building clean energy solutions at a faster rate than any other country on the planet - by a huge margin.

AdamN: 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 grid, demand, and of course supply too.

paganel: > Poverty and housing difficulties have nothing to do with reducing emissions.This is such a shit, classist take. It shouldn’t surprise me, after all I’m on a forum where people are all too happy to sell their souls to the likes of Alphabet and Meta for those juicy comps, but, even so, to fail to understand how come higher energy prices are fucking up the poors and the low-middle-classes is beyond stupid.

rithdmc: For those following along at home, it appears enir is (edit: as well as using EU wide data, not Irish data..) including non-electricity generation, or non-grid, energy use. Grid stats available here https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/electr...https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47308462

Ntrails: Reminds me of the FT article on the UK's energy transition and how costs were being spread through the system.https://www.ft.com/content/86fdb9e4-3db4-4e4f-8e47-580a1fad2...Made some reasonable points imo

deanc: This is what matters. The whole thing is an exercise in greenwashing. It doesn't matter if you stop burning coal in your own country, if the energy you import is also made by burning oil and gas.The whole conversation about clean energy is polluted by the complete misunderstanding of the general population of how energy demands are balanced. Saying you're replacing coal and gas with wind is just nonsense. It's one solution to a bigger problem. The big problem is how to balance your grid across peaks and troughs and that requires a diverse set of clean energy solutions, with wind being one small part of it.

jahnu: A very fair question and the answer is complicated. Production costs and transmission costs are separate. Also demand changes the market rate. And even if renewables are cheaper to produce in a market usually the highest price regardless of source sets the price. This is to incentivise the cheapest production methods to be invested in.It’s a massive topic and I encourage everyone to go and dive into it. It’s endlessly fascinating and also one of the really positive stories in the world right now which can help balance your emotions in a sometimes depressing world. At least for me it does.

bryanlarsen: > This is to incentivise the cheapest production methods to be invested in.It's also just a rule of economics. The price is set at the cost of the most expensive production necessary to meet demand.So if solar could fulfill 100% of energy demand, price would be the cost of solar, and any other more expensive generation would either lose money, shut down or idle.But if we shut down or idle those today we wouldn't have enough electricity, so the price rises until the more expensive plants can stay open and demand is met.

landl0rd: 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 does reduce the burden on one's own country. It is false in the sense of one's contribution to the global commons and externalizes those externalities previously more internalized. It is, in other words, a shell game. Ireland's dependence on imported energy continues to rise and the number continues to tick up on the books of other nations and down on hers, with her people paying the "guilt premium" associated with this accounting trick. They're not exactly dirty grids, but the fact remains, Ireland still relies to some extent on coal.Also note that, though she is building OCGTs and fast CCGTs elsewhere, she converted Moneypoint not to gas but to heavy fuel oil. HFO is quite dirty stuff, only a dozen or so per cent cleaner than the coal it replaces per Ireland's own EIS. This is likely influenced by the fact that the plant was specced to burn some of the cleaner thermal coal on the market, largely from Glencore's Cerrejon mine, with pretty low sulfur and ash relative to others. So, the delta from relatively clean coal (excuse the expression) to some of the dirtiest oil; large boilers like that are likely burning No. 5 or 6, aka bunker B or C in marine. Not sure if you've ever seen this stuff but it's the next thing from tar.Ireland could instead have chosen to pull in gas from the North Sea and reduced the emissions of Moneypoint by not twelve but fifty to sixty per cent with modern CCGTs. Even older, more readily-available OCGTs would give thirty to forty per cent. This is ~250mmcf, i.e. probably a 24" spur line. Though this likely necessitates a few hundred km of loop for the ring main to the west, it's less than a year's work with a competent American crew.Instead, she chose a paltry twelve per cent a few years earlier; when the other gas peaker capacity is installed, cooling infra and existing thermal plant talent base while paying to reconstitute all those on the other side of the island.None of this is to say Ireland's work on decarbonizing her grid isn't real, but "coal-free" rather tends to obscure the present state of things; it is generally understood to make a strong, binary truth claim that isn't subject to "mostly" and implies one is no longer dependent on coal. It therefore demands consideration of electricity's fungibility in a grid.

deanc: 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.

pstuart: 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.