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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 increase

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.

mrits 7mo ago
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4ndrewl 7mo ago
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.
- throw567643u8 7mo ago
  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.
  - capitol_ 7mo ago
    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.
  - pjc50 7mo ago
    Sure, but then the taxpayer has to pay for it anyway. https://news.tvbs.com.tw/english/2690584 https://news.tvbs.com.tw/english/2690584 "TAIPEI (TVBS News) — Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) announced on Tuesday (Nov. 19 2024) plans to subsidize Taiwan Power Company (台灣電力公司) with NT$100 billion to address rising international fuel costs and stabilize prices" => over $3bn USD! This is not a small amount of money.
  - alastairr 7mo ago
    You are right that Taiwan doesn't. But it has consequences, Taipower is forced to undercharge against market prices, but is backstopped by the government. At the end of the day, it's a global market, and if you want it 'cheap' someone has to pick up the tab. Either it's taxpayers now, taxpayers in the future or consumers now. https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2025/03/23/2003833896 https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2025/03/23/2...
  - owenversteeg 7mo ago
    I agree that the government should ensure low energy prices for industry, but Taiwan is a remarkably poor example. Taiwan's energy policy is, as far as I know, the most pants-on-head stupid of any country in the world. As anyone knows, they are a small island at constant risk of a sea blockade and yet rely on sea imports for 98% of their energy. Not only that, but they _had_ more domestic production (nuclear) that they have been phasing out. Writing giant checks to import yet more oil by sea instead of boosting domestic production is a terrible idea for so many reasons.
    - Qwertious 7mo ago
      Nuclear also relies on sea imports - nuclear fuel still needs to be imported, unless Taiwan has a uranium mine on the island. So nuclear doesn't solve the problem, it just kicks the can down the road.
      - pydry 7mo ago
        Easier to stockpile uranium than oil or gas though.
- pocksuppet 7mo ago
  You don't have to, but you make more profit if you do. An energy producer that has the choice to sell energy for a lower price domestically or a higher price internationally will obviously choose the higher price, but you can make laws to make that illegal, if you want to.
throw567643u8 7mo ago
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.
- jahnu 7mo ago
  You don’t have any coal fired power stations and only a little coal used for other purposes compared to historical uses. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-by-end-user-uk https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-by-end-user-uk Your emissions are dropping fast https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/united-kingdom https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/united-kingdom It’s not box ticking it’s the complexity of change.
- walthamstow 7mo ago
  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.
  - throw567643u8 7mo ago
    That's because we let all the industries go offshore, for the promises of Neoliberalism. That should never have happened either.
    - deleted 7mo ago
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    - deleted 7mo ago
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    - ben_w 7mo ago
      Goal-shifting aside, and be that as it may for offshoring, but Neoliberalism was Thatcher, and she was popular in part because the trade unions were seen as too powerful, which in part was because of the then-recent history of the coal miners' union going on strike and forcing a three-day week for much of British industry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week
jahnu 7mo ago
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 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - thunfischtoast 7mo ago
    > they know windpower and solar are not viable long term Why?
    - bryanlarsen 7mo ago
      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.
    - lowdownbutter 7mo ago
      They know that sometimes it's not windy, and they know about night.
      - john_strinlai 7mo ago
        >They know that sometimes it's not windy, and they know about night. they also know about batteries
deleted 7mo ago
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JansjoFromIkea 7mo ago
I do often wonder with this kind of thing whether an unspoken aspect of it is about not depleting the country's fossil fuels From what I understand Ireland has very little natural gas, very little coal and a not particularly large amount of peat. If they didn't shift towards importing all of that would be gone in the very near future. It's a bit weird how it gets branded as a solely green move when there's clearly other motives for it.
- rsynnott 7mo ago
  > very little coal For practical purposes no coal. There are no working coal mines in Ireland, and Moneypoint would have run entirely on imported coal since it was built. It was built with a bulk handling terminal for this purpose (very visible in photos of the plant: https://esb.ie/news---insights/inside-esb/moneypoint-power-station https://esb.ie/news---insights/inside-esb/moneypoint-power-s...). Note that it doesn't have a rail link; even if there had been the desire to use domestic coal and someone had gotten a mine going, there would have been no way to get it there.
rsynnott 7mo ago
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.
- roryirvine 7mo ago
  Electricity generated from peat peaked at 19.5% in 1990, apparently. And that's far outstripped by the current figure for renewables (42% in 2025) - so renewables have enabled locally-sourced production to reach more than double the share that was ever managed in the peat-burning days. (And the comparison is actually even better than it seems at first glance, given that the 2025 figures are all-island and the peat figures would be 3 or 4 points lower if you included NI. A good chunk of the 23.2% imports can probably also be classed as renewable, given that GB had a 47% renewable mix)
entropyie 7mo ago
Another Irishman here. Stop trying to harken back to some notional "good old days" that didn't exist. People are better off than they've ever been. Energy was always expensive relative to income. When I was a kid in the 80s, we weren't allowed to turn on the central heating unless there were arctic conditions. The main issue driving COL issues is the complete lack of social housing construction for the last 15 years. You can't blame the tree huggers for that. Renewable energy is a matter of national security, and prevents our hard earned money being sent overseas to regimes like Russia and all the charmers in the Middle East. Our very first electricity plant as a free state was hydro ffs.
Ntrails 7mo ago
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-8e47-580a1fad231d https://www.ft.com/content/86fdb9e4-3db4-4e4f-8e47-580a1fad2... Made some reasonable points imo
turtlesdown11 7mo ago
> providing cheap energy to now importing most of our energy Source for this claim? figures show 10-15% of power is imported, not "most", and those fluctuate with wind generation.
- IrishTechie 7mo ago
  Energy ≠ electricity
borvo 7mo ago
The true costs of the "cheap energy" were hidden. The high costs of the new approach are directly caused by policy decisions. https://progressireland.substack.com/p/irish-electricity-is-the-dearest https://progressireland.substack.com/p/irish-electricity-is-...
Dannymetconan 7mo ago
| more and more cost-of-living protests They must have been real quiet. Most the protests are related to how expensive it has become to rent / buy in this country. Ireland has encouraged and allowed a huge number of data centers to be setup here and been very slow to implement legislation for other green forms of energy generation. We don't need dirty forms of energy production here like coal and peat just to make energy cheap. Relying on Oil and Gas leaves us hugely at the whims of the international markets. | now importing most of our energy 14.0% of its electricity in 2024 according to https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/key-publications/national-energy-balance https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/key-pu...
- disgruntledphd2 7mo ago
  > Ireland has encouraged and allowed a huge number of data centers to be setup here and been very slow to implement legislation for other green forms of energy generation. We don't need dirty forms of energy production here like coal and peat just to make energy cheap. Relying on Oil and Gas leaves us hugely at the whims of the international markets. It's grid capacity more than anything which is the issue, and (like many other Irish issues) this is downstream of failures in our planning and permitting process.
  - Dannymetconan 7mo ago
    Agreed. As I said in another comment it is a policy decision to rely on market forces while making little effort to reform the planning process. We should be a world leader in wind energy but the planning process holds us back hugely.
  - PowerElectronix 7mo ago
    Governmens around the world trying to shift blame from gtid caoacity managers (so, themselves) to users because "they just consume too much". In no other industry are providers ever worried about selling too much.
- linhns 7mo ago
  You always need some backup when the wind does not blow, although in Ireland it blows almost everyday. A deal with the UK (although Milliband has idiotically jumped way too far on the green bandwagon and prevented North Sea drilling) should guarantee that.
disgruntledphd2 7mo ago
> 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 competition" in the words of a minister of the time. All the while we have vast, vast reserves of potential wind energy sitting unused because of (mostly) grid and permitting failures. This was and is entirely in our control, but the government(s) (even with the sad exception of the Greens) simply haven't put enough resources into it (although the grid is getting investment, we need a lot more). Also the critical infrastructure bill will (supposedly) help, but I'm sceptical as none of this ever seems to help. Which is to say, that I completely agree with you that the costs here shouldn't be born by the poorer people in Ireland, and we need a whole of government approach to driving down the price of energy. This will take time, but the best time to start doing this is now. My personal belief is that we should also aim to drive down the price of land, as the two biggest costs (for many countries) are land and energy, as they input into almost everything, but reducing land prices is a lot more controversial than reducing energy prices so we should start there.
- ZeroGravitas 7mo ago
  Recent data on import depdency from a link someone posted: > Ireland's energy import dependency was 79.6% in 2024, up from 78.3% in 2023 (for comparison, the EU average for 2023 was 58.3%). > Ireland imported 100% of its oil, 79.5% of its gas, and 14.0% of its electricity in 2024.
  - disgruntledphd2 7mo ago
    Yup, things kinda suck because of our complete failure to get our fingers out here. Again, people keep trying to build better stuff, but the planning process and our very decentralised democratic processes don't. help.
- interludead 7mo ago
  Generation technology got cheap quickly, but the grid expansion needed to support it moves at a much slower pace
karol 7mo ago
It's insanity to stop using country own resources and rely on unreliable tech and energy imports. As I browse the comments here I lament that most "above average IQ" folks still don't get this simple truth.
- thrance 7mo ago
  The real insanity is to keep burning that coal, that we know will render large part of the Earth uninhabitable if we don't stop ASAP. Also, it's more expensive than cleaner energy. You want a culprit so bad? Blame EU neoliberalism whose auterity has diverted important, necessary funds from our energy grid and left us in this delicate position.
  - deleted 7mo ago
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- rsynnott 7mo ago
  Ireland hasn't mined coal at all for about 40 years and _never_ really mined any significant part of its usage; even in the 19th century Ireland imported coal. Moneypoint was designed from the start to run on imported coal; it had no rail link, and a bloody great bulk-handling port attached to it. Getting rid of Moneypoint actually increased energy security (we do produce _some_ of our own natural gas, and the renewables don't require imports).
- cassepipe 7mo ago
  It's a marker of low IQ populism to believe things are simple and that the elite/technocracy/whatever is trying to hide that truth from us while making sure to never research why that might be so that they can keep on playing the blame game. No if you allow to exit the simplistic low/high IQ paradigm you set up, I just can't take seriously comments like this who have not even started to try to show that they have any grip on the subject at all. Heck you haven't even tried to assess the quantity/availability of Ireland's "own resource". Do you seriously want Ireland to relay on peat ? How long would that last ?
- turtlesdown11 7mo ago
saltysalt 7mo ago
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.
- disgruntledphd2 7mo ago
  > 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 the US (when they attacked Iran). And this hits me too, I have (unfortunately) oil heating which has gone from about 500 to 800 over the course of the last week. Fortunately we filled up last month, but it's really worrying. Ultimately though, the only way to fix this is to build a lot of wind (industrial scale) and solar (residential scale) as otherwise we're at the mercy of world events.
  - saltysalt 7mo ago
    A LNG terminal would help. Lots of bad infrastructure decisions have left us extremely exposed to those external shocks you mentioned.
    - short_sells_poo 7mo ago
      An LNG terminal would not help for the current high prices. Europe is experiencing a gas price shock precisely because LNG is easy to store and transport. Asia gets half it's gas through the Strait of Hormuz, which is currently experiencing troubles. This means Asia is willing to pay a lot of premium for LNG, which in turn means that Europe has to match this premium otherwise LNG will go to Asia and not Europe. Being dependent on gas is equal to being exposed to global shocks, unless you can cover your domestic needs purely with domestic gas extraction.
      - 7mo ago
ZeroGravitas 7mo ago
The actual causes of electricity cost rises in Ireland being higher than Europe are: Lower population density on a grid without good connections to neighbours. Previous underinvestment in network infrastructure. Gas price rises combined with Ireland having less renewables that the EU average (middle of the pack for electricity, 3rd from bottom on total energy). Maybe saving the world a bit harder would have helped keep prices down. It's certain that building more renewables now is the likeliest path to cheaper electricity. A report supporting those claims: https://www.nerinstitute.net/sites/default/files/research/8951%20NERI%20RS%2040%20Electricity.pdf https://www.nerinstitute.net/sites/default/files/research/89...
- FrojoS 7mo ago
  > 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.
  - vladms 7mo ago
    > Most Europe has way too high electricity prices. Way to high compared to what? Some countries do not even have a problem with prices but with capacity (Netherlands). They would be willing to pay but they do not have the grid to deliver where the thing is needed, and it's hard to build new grids in high density areas. > It seems logical that ending the use of existing coal energy infrastructure lead to an increase of prises. But doesn't this depend a lot on planning and investing in alternatives rather the just closing or not the coal? Sure, if you just close one source and leave everything else untouched prices will increase, but doesn't sound like the smartest approach overall...
    - selfmodruntime 7mo ago
      Way to high compared to actual cost. Almost half of fuel and electricity costs in Germany is tax.
delaminator 7mo ago
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- tpm 7mo ago
  Just for the record, neither of these things is suicidal. There are many prosperous countries importing energy and allowing foreigners to settle. Probably even most of them.
  - delaminator 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - tpm 7mo ago
      You did not provide any fact supporting the 'suicidality' of anything, or even any definition of 'suicidality'. Also narrowly defined ethnicities are not humans, they cannot commit suicide.
      - delaminator 7mo ago
        [flagged]
        tomhow 7mo ago
        We've banned this account.
        delaminator 7mo ago
        [dead]
        AlexeyBelov 7mo ago
        Cool, but late. There are tens of similar accounts active right now, and they are only banned after repeatedly and continously stepping over the line. Most of those accounts don't participate in good faith from day 1, but it takes 60-90 days for them to get banned. I don't know what to do about it, but it's a problem on HN for quite some time.
sleepyguy 7mo ago
I have never been to a country where the wind blows at plus 60kph for months at a time (Wexford). I don't think I have ever been there in the last 20 years where the wind has not been howling, the potential for Wind Power there is insane.....
cbeach 7mo ago
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- rsynnott 7mo ago
  Their comment is kinda nonsense, tho. Every single lump of coal burned in Moneypoint over its operating life was imported. We don't have significant coal reserves, and Moneypoint was designed from the start to run on imported coal; it does not even have a railway link.
  - cbeach 7mo ago
    Their comment is talking about a wider context than this single coal power station. In the UK, Net Zero politics means we are killing our own North Sea fossil fuel extraction, only to purchase North Sea fossil fuel from Norway, at an increased environmental (and financial) cost. That's the kind of political lunacy the OP is aluding to.
    - rsynnott 7mo ago
      Okay, but do you have any examples of such alleged lunacy in Ireland? Ireland has no economically exploitable oil or coal, and what gas there is is largely exhausted.
      - cbeach 7mo ago
        For Ireland, it's not so much the sourcing of fossil fuels, but the imposition of political taxes on fossil fuels onto consumers. About 50% of the retail price of petrol in Ireland is tax (excise + carbon + VAT). Overall fuel taxation in Ireland is ~50%, compared to 15-20% in the US. Although to be fair, most of Europe is doing the same thing to its population (during a cost of living crisis).
      - NamlchakKhandro 7mo ago
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bjourne 7mo ago
What's your source for Irish coal energy being cheap!?
MiscIdeaMaker99 7mo ago
Where was that coal coming from?
volkl48 7mo ago
Ireland hasn't mined any coal in 35 years, this plant was not operating on domestic resources to begin with. Anyway your actual problem are data center buildouts that are causing demand to skyrocket. They've gone from 5% of your electrical demand to >20% in less than a decade, and are the primary cause of your electricity crunch.
- rsynnott 7mo ago
  And even when we did mine coal, it was a small amount, and this plant never received any of it. It was designed from the start to run on imported coal, brought in on ships, and did not even have a rail connection.
1970-01-01 7mo ago
Lots of signal that this top post is now an LLM an not "an Irish man". The generous use of dashes to complete the thought process..have a look: https://www.dcaulfield.com/chatgpt-learning-dev https://www.dcaulfield.com/chatgpt-learning-dev See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47291513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47291513
- deleted 7mo ago
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aliasxneo 7mo ago
In this thread: the rich, unaffected class instruct the poor that their plight is in fact a fabrication. History really does repeat itself.
bayarearefugee 7mo ago
When AMOC collapses (which it will relatively soon) and Ireland is plunged into forever winter, get back to us on how great burning all that coal was.
behringer 7mo ago
Why not make the rich pay for this? They can afford it. You're taking your anger out on the wrong people.
amarant 7mo ago
Hey you're still better than Germany that closed all their eco friendly power down and started importing so much energy it's had an effect on prices in Sweden! I mean, at least you shut down the coal plants, those are legit bad for the environment. Germans shut down nuclear which is clean.
gadders 7mo ago
Same in the UK. Instead of us generating electricity via coal, we get other people to do it less cleanly and import it instead. That way our hands are clean.
- jodrellblank 7mo ago
  No. Our biggest interconnect is with France which is 72% nuclear. Currently importing 3GW from them. Our second biggest is with Norway which is 88% hydroelectric. Currently importing 1.7GW from them. We're importing 0.2GW from Belgium which is partly gas and partly nuclear. We're exporting power to Ireland, The Netherlands and Denmark. Imports is 6-7% of current UK grid power. Most of our power comes from us burning North Sea gas. [1] https://grid.iamkate.com/ https://grid.iamkate.com/ [2] https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes https://grid.iamkate.com/ https://grid.iamkate.com/
observationist 7mo ago
So glad you're taking the hit for the rest of us. Your sacrifice is totally worth the .001% difference you make, every little bit counts. Why is it people can clearly see the recycling scam for what it was, but the idea of coal or carbon fuels makes them entirely unable to handle any sort of thinking that isn't entirely superficial and one-sided? Maybe, like everything else in life, it's a complex series of tradeoffs, costs, and benefits, and you decide whether the cost is worth the benefit. And if a policy being pushed doesn't make sense when all the costs and benefits are accounted for, then someone is doing something shady and making a shit ton of money, especially if there's a huge amount of smoke and mirrors and politicized talk. Ireland's being used for things and it's obvious those in power don't care about and don't think the Irish people being affected by these sorts of policies can or will do anything about it. As that largely seems to be the case, I have to wonder if we're going to see a repeat of what seems to happen every time a government thinks that about the Irish and takes advantage of them.
- toraway 7mo ago
  This is just vague, incoherent angst dripping with so much sarcasm that it’s impossible for me to even understand what you’re trying to say.
danny_codes 7mo ago
Cheap energy from coal is very expensive energy. Who’s going to clean up the pollution? Carbon capture uses a lot of energy
htx80nerd 7mo ago
ChatGPT : "tell me about China use of coal energy" "China is by far the largest consumer and producer of coal in the world. Coal has historically been the backbone of China’s rapid industrialization and still plays a dominant role in its energy system." - ~55–60% of China’s electricity comes from coal (varies slightly year to year). - China consumes more coal than the rest of the world combined. - Annual consumption: roughly 4–4.5 billion tons per year. - China produces about 50% of global coal output The west suffers while China does whatever it wants, at a Grand Scale.
- Lio 7mo ago
  Can't blame GPT I guess it wasn't trained that recently but China is now taking steps to rectify that. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/china-plans-cut-carbon-dioxide-emissions-per-unit-gdp-by-around-38-2026-2026-03-05/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/china-...
- otherme123 7mo ago
  Yes, China consumes a lot of coal. But they are trying to consume less. You cannot ask a developing country to go back on its merging into the first world by consuming less energy or investing in more expensive sources only. We westerners are here because we grew on cheap and dirty energy, what moral ground do we have to ask them to stop growing? Coal was almost 100% of China energy consumption only 15 years ago, with a bit of hydro. Today they are very aggressively shifting towards anything but coal, as you found in ChatGPT, to less than 60% of coal in the mix. For comparison, the US is almost at the same point today than 15 years ago, only significantly replaced coal with more gas. A country that is consuming about the same amount of energy since 2000, while China consumes 5x.
  - cozyman 7mo ago
    [dead]
- Qwertious 7mo ago
  Now ask it whether it produces more renewable energy than the rest of the world combined. BREAKING NEWS: China is big.
Aunche 7mo ago
Even if you ignore the climate impact, fossil fuels pollution causes millions of premature deaths a year, and unlike with global warming, that effect is localized. That alone should be reason to transition off of fossil fuels, especially coal which is the dirtiest.
- Gareth321 7mo ago
  Just to play Devil's advocate here, [approximately 600,000 people die each year from extreme heat, while 4.5 million die from extreme cold.](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196$21$00081-4\/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...) Let's ignore the ratio for now, because there are second and third order consequences beyond extreme heat like famine to account for. 4.5 million people die each year because of inadequate access to cheaper energy. This is of course linear. Every time energy prices go up, so too do the number of people dying. That is the direct cost of the war on oil, coal, and natural gas, and there are many indirect costs (and lives) which go far beyond this. The intention of climate activists is to make fossil fuels much more expensive, meaning many more deaths. Of course, maybe the goal here is worth killing 4.5+++ million people per year. There are no perfect solutions; only compromises. Maybe many more will die if we don't act. [The IPCC estimates that an additional 250,000 people per year, between 2030 and 2050, will die from the effects of climate change.](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-cha...) That covers all modes of death, such as famine. For those in the room doing the math, many times more people will die today by making energy more expensive. Activists are asking us to sacrifice millions of lives per year today to save an estimated 250,000 lives per year decades from now. For this reason, I no longer support making energy more expensive. I support environmental efforts to reduce pollution, but I can no longer justify the high cost of human life associated with taxes on energy. Instead, I really think activists should focus on making energy cheaper. This means working on solutions to make renewable energy and nuclear cheaper per unit of energy than fossil fuels. That's a path to saving lives which I think most people can get on board with.
interludead 7mo ago
The bigger issue might be whether the transition is being managed in a way that protects consumers
babypuncher 7mo ago
The longer we put off solving climate change, the more expensive it is going to be for the poor and middle-classes.
samrus 7mo ago
Oof. That paints it in a different light. They arent investing in renewables?
array_key_first 7mo ago
Coal is the most expensive form of power still widely used and it's not even close. Coal is literally just bad. It's hard as hell to transport, it's extremely inefficient to burn, and it produces a shit ton of harmful byproducts you have to clean up.
anigbrowl 7mo ago
providing cheap energy From what, turf? Back in the 1980s Ireland was importing coal from Poland because domestic mines weren't efficient. You're full of it.
SV_BubbleTime 7mo ago
Look forward to the San Francisco upper class telling you how wrong you are about Irish energy and politics.
ting0 7mo ago
Same thing is happening in Australia. This is what happens when you vote socialists into power.
NoLinkToMe 7mo ago
Eh not sure what you're talking about. You can see here the electricity figures in Ireland: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/IE/all/yearly https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/IE/all/yearly > We've graduated from providing cheap energy to now importing most of our energy. We've seen huge energy price increases as a result. Wrong. As you can see Ireland always produced a very limited about of electricity from coal, around 11% ten years ago when wind was 10% less. In other words, wind simply replaced coal, not imports. For the last 50 years gas provides the bulk of your electricity, but Ireland produces virtually no gas and has always imported it. The jump in prices was due to these gas prices increasing due to the Russia/Ukraine war as of 2020, it had nothing to do with import changes. Had you invested more in wind/solar, you'd be affected less. In fact Ireland barely imports anything at all, over the last ten years the net import are close to zero. 2025 was a peak year for imports but even then imports constituted a small 13%, whereas 2024 was a year where Ireland was a net exporter, as was 2020, and 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019. In fact of the last ten years it was a net exporter 7 times, more than twice as often as the 3 years it was a net importer. And its imported when the UK has cheaper electricity prices, otherwise there'd be no reason to import. So your entire argument isn't true. Wind/solar can beat coal on a cost-basis now, evidenced by the fact that the average existing coal plant isn't running half the time because it's more expensive, let alone building out more coal. The smartest thing to have done is mass-invest in solar/wind in a country with a population density 4x lower than the UK.

mrits 7mo ago

[flagged]

4ndrewl 7mo ago

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.

throw567643u8 7mo ago
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.
- capitol_ 7mo ago
  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.
- pjc50 7mo ago
  Sure, but then the taxpayer has to pay for it anyway. https://news.tvbs.com.tw/english/2690584 https://news.tvbs.com.tw/english/2690584 "TAIPEI (TVBS News) — Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) announced on Tuesday (Nov. 19 2024) plans to subsidize Taiwan Power Company (台灣電力公司) with NT$100 billion to address rising international fuel costs and stabilize prices" => over $3bn USD! This is not a small amount of money.
- alastairr 7mo ago
  You are right that Taiwan doesn't. But it has consequences, Taipower is forced to undercharge against market prices, but is backstopped by the government. At the end of the day, it's a global market, and if you want it 'cheap' someone has to pick up the tab. Either it's taxpayers now, taxpayers in the future or consumers now. https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2025/03/23/2003833896 https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2025/03/23/2...
- owenversteeg 7mo ago
  I agree that the government should ensure low energy prices for industry, but Taiwan is a remarkably poor example. Taiwan's energy policy is, as far as I know, the most pants-on-head stupid of any country in the world. As anyone knows, they are a small island at constant risk of a sea blockade and yet rely on sea imports for 98% of their energy. Not only that, but they _had_ more domestic production (nuclear) that they have been phasing out. Writing giant checks to import yet more oil by sea instead of boosting domestic production is a terrible idea for so many reasons.
  - Qwertious 7mo ago
    Nuclear also relies on sea imports - nuclear fuel still needs to be imported, unless Taiwan has a uranium mine on the island. So nuclear doesn't solve the problem, it just kicks the can down the road.
    - pydry 7mo ago
      Easier to stockpile uranium than oil or gas though.
pocksuppet 7mo ago
You don't have to, but you make more profit if you do. An energy producer that has the choice to sell energy for a lower price domestically or a higher price internationally will obviously choose the higher price, but you can make laws to make that illegal, if you want to.

throw567643u8 7mo ago

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.

jahnu 7mo ago
You don’t have any coal fired power stations and only a little coal used for other purposes compared to historical uses. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-by-end-user-uk https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-by-end-user-uk Your emissions are dropping fast https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/united-kingdom https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/united-kingdom It’s not box ticking it’s the complexity of change.
walthamstow 7mo ago
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.
- throw567643u8 7mo ago
  That's because we let all the industries go offshore, for the promises of Neoliberalism. That should never have happened either.
  - deleted 7mo ago
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  - ben_w 7mo ago
    Goal-shifting aside, and be that as it may for offshoring, but Neoliberalism was Thatcher, and she was popular in part because the trade unions were seen as too powerful, which in part was because of the then-recent history of the coal miners' union going on strike and forcing a three-day week for much of British industry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week

jahnu 7mo ago

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 7mo ago
[flagged]
- thunfischtoast 7mo ago
  > they know windpower and solar are not viable long term Why?
  - bryanlarsen 7mo ago
    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.
  - lowdownbutter 7mo ago
    They know that sometimes it's not windy, and they know about night.
    - john_strinlai 7mo ago
      >They know that sometimes it's not windy, and they know about night. they also know about batteries

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

JansjoFromIkea 7mo ago

I do often wonder with this kind of thing whether an unspoken aspect of it is about not depleting the country's fossil fuels From what I understand Ireland has very little natural gas, very little coal and a not particularly large amount of peat. If they didn't shift towards importing all of that would be gone in the very near future. It's a bit weird how it gets branded as a solely green move when there's clearly other motives for it.

rsynnott 7mo ago
> very little coal For practical purposes no coal. There are no working coal mines in Ireland, and Moneypoint would have run entirely on imported coal since it was built. It was built with a bulk handling terminal for this purpose (very visible in photos of the plant: https://esb.ie/news---insights/inside-esb/moneypoint-power-station https://esb.ie/news---insights/inside-esb/moneypoint-power-s...). Note that it doesn't have a rail link; even if there had been the desire to use domestic coal and someone had gotten a mine going, there would have been no way to get it there.

rsynnott 7mo ago

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.

roryirvine 7mo ago
Electricity generated from peat peaked at 19.5% in 1990, apparently. And that's far outstripped by the current figure for renewables (42% in 2025) - so renewables have enabled locally-sourced production to reach more than double the share that was ever managed in the peat-burning days. (And the comparison is actually even better than it seems at first glance, given that the 2025 figures are all-island and the peat figures would be 3 or 4 points lower if you included NI. A good chunk of the 23.2% imports can probably also be classed as renewable, given that GB had a 47% renewable mix)

entropyie 7mo ago

Another Irishman here. Stop trying to harken back to some notional "good old days" that didn't exist. People are better off than they've ever been. Energy was always expensive relative to income. When I was a kid in the 80s, we weren't allowed to turn on the central heating unless there were arctic conditions. The main issue driving COL issues is the complete lack of social housing construction for the last 15 years. You can't blame the tree huggers for that. Renewable energy is a matter of national security, and prevents our hard earned money being sent overseas to regimes like Russia and all the charmers in the Middle East. Our very first electricity plant as a free state was hydro ffs.

Ntrails 7mo ago

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-8e47-580a1fad231d https://www.ft.com/content/86fdb9e4-3db4-4e4f-8e47-580a1fad2... Made some reasonable points imo

turtlesdown11 7mo ago

> providing cheap energy to now importing most of our energy Source for this claim? figures show 10-15% of power is imported, not "most", and those fluctuate with wind generation.

IrishTechie 7mo ago
Energy ≠ electricity

borvo 7mo ago

The true costs of the "cheap energy" were hidden. The high costs of the new approach are directly caused by policy decisions. https://progressireland.substack.com/p/irish-electricity-is-the-dearest https://progressireland.substack.com/p/irish-electricity-is-...

Dannymetconan 7mo ago

| more and more cost-of-living protests They must have been real quiet. Most the protests are related to how expensive it has become to rent / buy in this country. Ireland has encouraged and allowed a huge number of data centers to be setup here and been very slow to implement legislation for other green forms of energy generation. We don't need dirty forms of energy production here like coal and peat just to make energy cheap. Relying on Oil and Gas leaves us hugely at the whims of the international markets. | now importing most of our energy 14.0% of its electricity in 2024 according to https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/key-publications/national-energy-balance https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/key-pu...

disgruntledphd2 7mo ago
> Ireland has encouraged and allowed a huge number of data centers to be setup here and been very slow to implement legislation for other green forms of energy generation. We don't need dirty forms of energy production here like coal and peat just to make energy cheap. Relying on Oil and Gas leaves us hugely at the whims of the international markets. It's grid capacity more than anything which is the issue, and (like many other Irish issues) this is downstream of failures in our planning and permitting process.
- Dannymetconan 7mo ago
  Agreed. As I said in another comment it is a policy decision to rely on market forces while making little effort to reform the planning process. We should be a world leader in wind energy but the planning process holds us back hugely.
- PowerElectronix 7mo ago
  Governmens around the world trying to shift blame from gtid caoacity managers (so, themselves) to users because "they just consume too much". In no other industry are providers ever worried about selling too much.
linhns 7mo ago
You always need some backup when the wind does not blow, although in Ireland it blows almost everyday. A deal with the UK (although Milliband has idiotically jumped way too far on the green bandwagon and prevented North Sea drilling) should guarantee that.

disgruntledphd2 7mo ago

> 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 competition" in the words of a minister of the time. All the while we have vast, vast reserves of potential wind energy sitting unused because of (mostly) grid and permitting failures. This was and is entirely in our control, but the government(s) (even with the sad exception of the Greens) simply haven't put enough resources into it (although the grid is getting investment, we need a lot more). Also the critical infrastructure bill will (supposedly) help, but I'm sceptical as none of this ever seems to help. Which is to say, that I completely agree with you that the costs here shouldn't be born by the poorer people in Ireland, and we need a whole of government approach to driving down the price of energy. This will take time, but the best time to start doing this is now. My personal belief is that we should also aim to drive down the price of land, as the two biggest costs (for many countries) are land and energy, as they input into almost everything, but reducing land prices is a lot more controversial than reducing energy prices so we should start there.

ZeroGravitas 7mo ago
Recent data on import depdency from a link someone posted: > Ireland's energy import dependency was 79.6% in 2024, up from 78.3% in 2023 (for comparison, the EU average for 2023 was 58.3%). > Ireland imported 100% of its oil, 79.5% of its gas, and 14.0% of its electricity in 2024.
- disgruntledphd2 7mo ago
  Yup, things kinda suck because of our complete failure to get our fingers out here. Again, people keep trying to build better stuff, but the planning process and our very decentralised democratic processes don't. help.
interludead 7mo ago
Generation technology got cheap quickly, but the grid expansion needed to support it moves at a much slower pace

karol 7mo ago

It's insanity to stop using country own resources and rely on unreliable tech and energy imports. As I browse the comments here I lament that most "above average IQ" folks still don't get this simple truth.

thrance 7mo ago
The real insanity is to keep burning that coal, that we know will render large part of the Earth uninhabitable if we don't stop ASAP. Also, it's more expensive than cleaner energy. You want a culprit so bad? Blame EU neoliberalism whose auterity has diverted important, necessary funds from our energy grid and left us in this delicate position.
- deleted 7mo ago
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rsynnott 7mo ago
Ireland hasn't mined coal at all for about 40 years and _never_ really mined any significant part of its usage; even in the 19th century Ireland imported coal. Moneypoint was designed from the start to run on imported coal; it had no rail link, and a bloody great bulk-handling port attached to it. Getting rid of Moneypoint actually increased energy security (we do produce _some_ of our own natural gas, and the renewables don't require imports).
cassepipe 7mo ago
It's a marker of low IQ populism to believe things are simple and that the elite/technocracy/whatever is trying to hide that truth from us while making sure to never research why that might be so that they can keep on playing the blame game. No if you allow to exit the simplistic low/high IQ paradigm you set up, I just can't take seriously comments like this who have not even started to try to show that they have any grip on the subject at all. Heck you haven't even tried to assess the quantity/availability of Ireland's "own resource". Do you seriously want Ireland to relay on peat ? How long would that last ?
turtlesdown11 7mo ago

saltysalt 7mo ago

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.

disgruntledphd2 7mo ago
> 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 the US (when they attacked Iran). And this hits me too, I have (unfortunately) oil heating which has gone from about 500 to 800 over the course of the last week. Fortunately we filled up last month, but it's really worrying. Ultimately though, the only way to fix this is to build a lot of wind (industrial scale) and solar (residential scale) as otherwise we're at the mercy of world events.
- saltysalt 7mo ago
  A LNG terminal would help. Lots of bad infrastructure decisions have left us extremely exposed to those external shocks you mentioned.
  - short_sells_poo 7mo ago
    An LNG terminal would not help for the current high prices. Europe is experiencing a gas price shock precisely because LNG is easy to store and transport. Asia gets half it's gas through the Strait of Hormuz, which is currently experiencing troubles. This means Asia is willing to pay a lot of premium for LNG, which in turn means that Europe has to match this premium otherwise LNG will go to Asia and not Europe. Being dependent on gas is equal to being exposed to global shocks, unless you can cover your domestic needs purely with domestic gas extraction.
    - 7mo ago

ZeroGravitas 7mo ago

The actual causes of electricity cost rises in Ireland being higher than Europe are: Lower population density on a grid without good connections to neighbours. Previous underinvestment in network infrastructure. Gas price rises combined with Ireland having less renewables that the EU average (middle of the pack for electricity, 3rd from bottom on total energy). Maybe saving the world a bit harder would have helped keep prices down. It's certain that building more renewables now is the likeliest path to cheaper electricity. A report supporting those claims: https://www.nerinstitute.net/sites/default/files/research/8951%20NERI%20RS%2040%20Electricity.pdf https://www.nerinstitute.net/sites/default/files/research/89...

FrojoS 7mo ago
> 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.
- vladms 7mo ago
  > Most Europe has way too high electricity prices. Way to high compared to what? Some countries do not even have a problem with prices but with capacity (Netherlands). They would be willing to pay but they do not have the grid to deliver where the thing is needed, and it's hard to build new grids in high density areas. > It seems logical that ending the use of existing coal energy infrastructure lead to an increase of prises. But doesn't this depend a lot on planning and investing in alternatives rather the just closing or not the coal? Sure, if you just close one source and leave everything else untouched prices will increase, but doesn't sound like the smartest approach overall...
  - selfmodruntime 7mo ago
    Way to high compared to actual cost. Almost half of fuel and electricity costs in Germany is tax.

delaminator 7mo ago

[flagged]

tpm 7mo ago
Just for the record, neither of these things is suicidal. There are many prosperous countries importing energy and allowing foreigners to settle. Probably even most of them.
- delaminator 7mo ago
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  - tpm 7mo ago
    You did not provide any fact supporting the 'suicidality' of anything, or even any definition of 'suicidality'. Also narrowly defined ethnicities are not humans, they cannot commit suicide.
    - delaminator 7mo ago
      [flagged]
      - tomhow 7mo ago
        We've banned this account.
        delaminator 7mo ago
        [dead]
        AlexeyBelov 7mo ago
        Cool, but late. There are tens of similar accounts active right now, and they are only banned after repeatedly and continously stepping over the line. Most of those accounts don't participate in good faith from day 1, but it takes 60-90 days for them to get banned. I don't know what to do about it, but it's a problem on HN for quite some time.

sleepyguy 7mo ago

I have never been to a country where the wind blows at plus 60kph for months at a time (Wexford). I don't think I have ever been there in the last 20 years where the wind has not been howling, the potential for Wind Power there is insane.....

cbeach 7mo ago

[flagged]

rsynnott 7mo ago
Their comment is kinda nonsense, tho. Every single lump of coal burned in Moneypoint over its operating life was imported. We don't have significant coal reserves, and Moneypoint was designed from the start to run on imported coal; it does not even have a railway link.
- cbeach 7mo ago
  Their comment is talking about a wider context than this single coal power station. In the UK, Net Zero politics means we are killing our own North Sea fossil fuel extraction, only to purchase North Sea fossil fuel from Norway, at an increased environmental (and financial) cost. That's the kind of political lunacy the OP is aluding to.
  - rsynnott 7mo ago
    Okay, but do you have any examples of such alleged lunacy in Ireland? Ireland has no economically exploitable oil or coal, and what gas there is is largely exhausted.
    - cbeach 7mo ago
      For Ireland, it's not so much the sourcing of fossil fuels, but the imposition of political taxes on fossil fuels onto consumers. About 50% of the retail price of petrol in Ireland is tax (excise + carbon + VAT). Overall fuel taxation in Ireland is ~50%, compared to 15-20% in the US. Although to be fair, most of Europe is doing the same thing to its population (during a cost of living crisis).
    - NamlchakKhandro 7mo ago
      [flagged]

bjourne 7mo ago

What's your source for Irish coal energy being cheap!?

MiscIdeaMaker99 7mo ago

Where was that coal coming from?

volkl48 7mo ago

Ireland hasn't mined any coal in 35 years, this plant was not operating on domestic resources to begin with. Anyway your actual problem are data center buildouts that are causing demand to skyrocket. They've gone from 5% of your electrical demand to >20% in less than a decade, and are the primary cause of your electricity crunch.

rsynnott 7mo ago
And even when we did mine coal, it was a small amount, and this plant never received any of it. It was designed from the start to run on imported coal, brought in on ships, and did not even have a rail connection.

1970-01-01 7mo ago

Lots of signal that this top post is now an LLM an not "an Irish man". The generous use of dashes to complete the thought process..have a look: https://www.dcaulfield.com/chatgpt-learning-dev https://www.dcaulfield.com/chatgpt-learning-dev See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47291513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47291513

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

aliasxneo 7mo ago

In this thread: the rich, unaffected class instruct the poor that their plight is in fact a fabrication. History really does repeat itself.

bayarearefugee 7mo ago

When AMOC collapses (which it will relatively soon) and Ireland is plunged into forever winter, get back to us on how great burning all that coal was.

behringer 7mo ago

Why not make the rich pay for this? They can afford it. You're taking your anger out on the wrong people.

amarant 7mo ago

Hey you're still better than Germany that closed all their eco friendly power down and started importing so much energy it's had an effect on prices in Sweden! I mean, at least you shut down the coal plants, those are legit bad for the environment. Germans shut down nuclear which is clean.

gadders 7mo ago

Same in the UK. Instead of us generating electricity via coal, we get other people to do it less cleanly and import it instead. That way our hands are clean.

jodrellblank 7mo ago
No. Our biggest interconnect is with France which is 72% nuclear. Currently importing 3GW from them. Our second biggest is with Norway which is 88% hydroelectric. Currently importing 1.7GW from them. We're importing 0.2GW from Belgium which is partly gas and partly nuclear. We're exporting power to Ireland, The Netherlands and Denmark. Imports is 6-7% of current UK grid power. Most of our power comes from us burning North Sea gas. [1] https://grid.iamkate.com/ https://grid.iamkate.com/ [2] https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes https://grid.iamkate.com/ https://grid.iamkate.com/

observationist 7mo ago

So glad you're taking the hit for the rest of us. Your sacrifice is totally worth the .001% difference you make, every little bit counts. Why is it people can clearly see the recycling scam for what it was, but the idea of coal or carbon fuels makes them entirely unable to handle any sort of thinking that isn't entirely superficial and one-sided? Maybe, like everything else in life, it's a complex series of tradeoffs, costs, and benefits, and you decide whether the cost is worth the benefit. And if a policy being pushed doesn't make sense when all the costs and benefits are accounted for, then someone is doing something shady and making a shit ton of money, especially if there's a huge amount of smoke and mirrors and politicized talk. Ireland's being used for things and it's obvious those in power don't care about and don't think the Irish people being affected by these sorts of policies can or will do anything about it. As that largely seems to be the case, I have to wonder if we're going to see a repeat of what seems to happen every time a government thinks that about the Irish and takes advantage of them.

toraway 7mo ago
This is just vague, incoherent angst dripping with so much sarcasm that it’s impossible for me to even understand what you’re trying to say.

danny_codes 7mo ago

Cheap energy from coal is very expensive energy. Who’s going to clean up the pollution? Carbon capture uses a lot of energy

htx80nerd 7mo ago

ChatGPT : "tell me about China use of coal energy" "China is by far the largest consumer and producer of coal in the world. Coal has historically been the backbone of China’s rapid industrialization and still plays a dominant role in its energy system." - ~55–60% of China’s electricity comes from coal (varies slightly year to year). - China consumes more coal than the rest of the world combined. - Annual consumption: roughly 4–4.5 billion tons per year. - China produces about 50% of global coal output The west suffers while China does whatever it wants, at a Grand Scale.

Lio 7mo ago
Can't blame GPT I guess it wasn't trained that recently but China is now taking steps to rectify that. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/china-plans-cut-carbon-dioxide-emissions-per-unit-gdp-by-around-38-2026-2026-03-05/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/china-...
otherme123 7mo ago
Yes, China consumes a lot of coal. But they are trying to consume less. You cannot ask a developing country to go back on its merging into the first world by consuming less energy or investing in more expensive sources only. We westerners are here because we grew on cheap and dirty energy, what moral ground do we have to ask them to stop growing? Coal was almost 100% of China energy consumption only 15 years ago, with a bit of hydro. Today they are very aggressively shifting towards anything but coal, as you found in ChatGPT, to less than 60% of coal in the mix. For comparison, the US is almost at the same point today than 15 years ago, only significantly replaced coal with more gas. A country that is consuming about the same amount of energy since 2000, while China consumes 5x.
- cozyman 7mo ago
  [dead]
Qwertious 7mo ago
Now ask it whether it produces more renewable energy than the rest of the world combined. BREAKING NEWS: China is big.

Aunche 7mo ago

Even if you ignore the climate impact, fossil fuels pollution causes millions of premature deaths a year, and unlike with global warming, that effect is localized. That alone should be reason to transition off of fossil fuels, especially coal which is the dirtiest.

Gareth321 7mo ago
Just to play Devil's advocate here, [approximately 600,000 people die each year from extreme heat, while 4.5 million die from extreme cold.](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196$21$00081-4\/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...) Let's ignore the ratio for now, because there are second and third order consequences beyond extreme heat like famine to account for. 4.5 million people die each year because of inadequate access to cheaper energy. This is of course linear. Every time energy prices go up, so too do the number of people dying. That is the direct cost of the war on oil, coal, and natural gas, and there are many indirect costs (and lives) which go far beyond this. The intention of climate activists is to make fossil fuels much more expensive, meaning many more deaths. Of course, maybe the goal here is worth killing 4.5+++ million people per year. There are no perfect solutions; only compromises. Maybe many more will die if we don't act. [The IPCC estimates that an additional 250,000 people per year, between 2030 and 2050, will die from the effects of climate change.](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-cha...) That covers all modes of death, such as famine. For those in the room doing the math, many times more people will die today by making energy more expensive. Activists are asking us to sacrifice millions of lives per year today to save an estimated 250,000 lives per year decades from now. For this reason, I no longer support making energy more expensive. I support environmental efforts to reduce pollution, but I can no longer justify the high cost of human life associated with taxes on energy. Instead, I really think activists should focus on making energy cheaper. This means working on solutions to make renewable energy and nuclear cheaper per unit of energy than fossil fuels. That's a path to saving lives which I think most people can get on board with.

interludead 7mo ago

The bigger issue might be whether the transition is being managed in a way that protects consumers

babypuncher 7mo ago

The longer we put off solving climate change, the more expensive it is going to be for the poor and middle-classes.

samrus 7mo ago

Oof. That paints it in a different light. They arent investing in renewables?

array_key_first 7mo ago

Coal is the most expensive form of power still widely used and it's not even close. Coal is literally just bad. It's hard as hell to transport, it's extremely inefficient to burn, and it produces a shit ton of harmful byproducts you have to clean up.

anigbrowl 7mo ago

providing cheap energy From what, turf? Back in the 1980s Ireland was importing coal from Poland because domestic mines weren't efficient. You're full of it.

SV_BubbleTime 7mo ago

Look forward to the San Francisco upper class telling you how wrong you are about Irish energy and politics.

ting0 7mo ago

Same thing is happening in Australia. This is what happens when you vote socialists into power.

NoLinkToMe 7mo ago

Eh not sure what you're talking about. You can see here the electricity figures in Ireland: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/IE/all/yearly https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/IE/all/yearly > We've graduated from providing cheap energy to now importing most of our energy. We've seen huge energy price increases as a result. Wrong. As you can see Ireland always produced a very limited about of electricity from coal, around 11% ten years ago when wind was 10% less. In other words, wind simply replaced coal, not imports. For the last 50 years gas provides the bulk of your electricity, but Ireland produces virtually no gas and has always imported it. The jump in prices was due to these gas prices increasing due to the Russia/Ukraine war as of 2020, it had nothing to do with import changes. Had you invested more in wind/solar, you'd be affected less. In fact Ireland barely imports anything at all, over the last ten years the net import are close to zero. 2025 was a peak year for imports but even then imports constituted a small 13%, whereas 2024 was a year where Ireland was a net exporter, as was 2020, and 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019. In fact of the last ten years it was a net exporter 7 times, more than twice as often as the 3 years it was a net importer. And its imported when the UK has cheaper electricity prices, otherwise there'd be no reason to import. So your entire argument isn't true. Wind/solar can beat coal on a cost-basis now, evidenced by the fact that the average existing coal plant isn't running half the time because it's more expensive, let alone building out more coal. The smartest thing to have done is mass-invest in solar/wind in a country with a population density 4x lower than the UK.