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

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.

Never used coal power:

  Albania, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Switzerland, Norway

  2016: Belgium
  2020: Sweden, Austria
  2021: Portugal
  2024: United Kingdom
  2025: Ireland

  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

I really hope they just turn heavily toward renewables. We have enough offshore wind in Ireland to power most of the world, if we could just build enough turbines and harness it. We could become a net exporter of green power

However, every other number in the piece is mentioned as some multiple of Wh's (GWh typically). That makes it very hard to tell what proportion of capacity was removed from the system as a proportion of the total generating capacity. I think the writer might have served us better with the use of some helpful percentage comparisons.

From the SEAI report (2024) (https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/key-pu...)

- Electricity demand in Ireland was 32.9 TWh in 2024, up 4.1% on 2023-levels

- Commercial services, which includes the ICT sub-sector, accounted for 41.2% of electricity demand.

- The residential sector accounted for 25.5% of electricity demand in 2024.

- Data centres accounted for 21.2% of all electricity demand in 2024.

- Data centres account for 88.2% of the increase observed in Ireland’s electricity demand since 2015.

If I've done my math correctly, Moneypoint generates about 8TWh, if operating continuously; which it's probably not. Can we say 6-7 TWh?

That is not an insubstantial portion of the total.

Our goal shouldn’t be to be coal free. Our goal should be to be 100% renewable.

If we set up our goals in terms of what we don’t want, we end up in the situation we are right now: high energy costs, very dependent on energy imports and a high risk of loosing our industry

It addresses key questions such as "What about China?" and "Can we stop it?"

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222768021-clearing-the-a...

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 (or smelled) 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.

Here is the dashboard for electricity in Ireland.

Ireland is not industrialised in a similar way to other EU countries like Germany or Italy which has lots of heavy manufacturing. Irish industry is mostly composed of US pharmaceuticals and data centres occupying much of the energy demand. There is a bauxite facility in limerick which does come to mind but that sort of thing isn't common in Ireland.

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.

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 cause one day

Edit: instead of downvoting my post, feel free to pay my electric bill, lol

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...