[ZeroGravitas]

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/89...

[FrojoS]

> 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.

[jmward01]

> It seems logical that ending the use of existing coal energy infrastructure puts upward pressure on prices

Only if you externalize environmental costs. The point is that coal is actually really expensive. The only real argument is how fast the implicit subsidy on these externalized costs should be removed. The world has had decades to slowly remove these subsidies and failed to do so. The impacts caused by these externalized factors are starting to stack up and so should the prices.

[bryanlarsen]

> Coal is cheap, abundant, energy dense.

Coal is neither cheap nor abundant in Ireland.

[reillyse]

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

[hunterpayne]

Ireland isn't sunny enough for solar to help with AGW. In fact, solar in Ireland actually just frontloads and exports to the 3rd world the CO2 generated. Oh, and the power to make PV panels...comes from coal. On the other hand, if you just put a windmill next to an Irish politician, you could power the entire country.

[bryanlarsen]

That would only be true if solar panels had be trashed and repurchased every 6 months. But instead they last > 25 years, and can be recycled rather than trashed.

[hunterpayne]

No, that's wishful thinking. You can have your own opinion, but not your own facts. Engineers actually calculate all this stuff. EROEI for instance means Energy Returned on Energy Invested. For renewables, its 4. That means under ideal conditions (albino of 1, 20 year lifetime), over the lifetime of the panel you get back 4x the energy that it took to extract the materials, make the panels and install them. So if you site the panel somewhere with an albino of .25 (Spain) you get about as much power out of them as they took to make and install. And that obviously doesn't actually help with AGW.

[belorn]

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

[Macha]

In 2023, peak renewable generation capacity was 75% of typical energy demand:

https://www.eirgrid.ie/news/new-record-wind-energy-all-islan...

For actual generation over a longer time period, in February 2026, 48% of energy used was generated from renewable sources, of which the vast majority (41% of energy use) was wind:

https://www.eirgrid.ie/news/almost-50-electricity-came-renew...

(The previous February was slightly better with 54% renewable and 48% wind)

https://www.eirgrid.ie/news/renewables-powered-over-half-ele...

[belorn]

With 75% in 2023, it means there are still headroom for expansion without hurting the economics too much of existing wind farms. Denmark had a very clear growth of wind farms up to about 100% of demand during optimal weather, and then a very clear stop in growth afterward. On average it still only produce about half the energy consumed in Denmark, so over time I do not expect to see Ireland to go much higher than 50%. It might get a slight advantage given the improved wind farm technology to utilize low wind conditions.

I do see in the political goals for Ireland that they, like Germany and many other countries in EU, are relying on the idea to turn wind into green hydrogen once they hit that 100% during optimal weather. Peoples faith in that strategy has gone down significant in the last 5-10 years.

[hihitsdumb]

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

[redeeman]

does this renewable policy of wind farms etc also extend to the rain forest being cut down for balsawood? or the landfilles the massive chunks of fiberglass coated wings then get put into?

I guess we need a new planet when we're done filling it with junk and have depleted all the rain forest etc

[sensanaty]

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

[hunterpayne]

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

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

[lovich]

What is the balsawood comment in reference to? I’ve never heard that mentioned in conversation around renewables but it’s not my area of expertise.

[awesome_dude]

I didn't know about balsa wood in Wind Turbines either until this thread - looked it up and found that it's being replaced with PET foam because of the problems caused by deforestation (etc)

https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/executive_briefings/e...

[skywhopper]

Is your point that coal mining, transport, and usage have no negative externalities?

[reillyse]

90% of the coal that was being used comes from Colombia, thats not really even that far guys and I'm sure it's mined under the most stringent environmental controls.

[kkkqkqkqkqlqlql]

Ah yes, the Landman argument.

https://youtu.be/wBC_bug5DIQ?si=rfKryFd9fgJ1Gw0h

[linksnapzz]

Coal is cheap and abundant in the English Midlands, which explains much of the industrial revolution starting there.

Said collieries, which if put back into service, would be able to cheaply get coal to Ireland via barge at no great cost or latency.

[TheOtherHobbes]

The UK's deep mines would be spectacularly uneconomic. Some have been sealed permanently (for expensive values of permanent) and the supporting knowledge and infrastructure would have to be rebuilt.

Coal makes as much sense as a modern fuel as horse drawn buses do for transport.

[linksnapzz]

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

[avianlyric]

Oh no somebody told China about the future. That’s why they sell everyone cheap PV panels, and are now building out the equivalent of the entire UKs existing solar and wind capacity every year. Plus they’re getting faster.

In 20 years time China gonna be entirely powered by renewables while we’re still having this silly argument about what the future is going to look like.

[ianburrell]

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

[linksnapzz]

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

How'd that work out?

[baron816]

Coal also isn’t really energy dense since so much of the energy is wasted when converting to electricity

[marcosdumay]

It is still one of the densest sources. It's just not as dense as it naively seems.

[linksnapzz]

Rankine cycle efficiency can be up to 45%; monocrystalline solar panels ~25%? I suppose you aren't paying for the sunshine, but if cloudy days affected coal power, James Watt wouldn't be famous.

[ok_dad]

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

[linksnapzz]

"Cloudy days are solved by wind, ocean energy, geothermal, storage,"

Or, as Homer Simpson famously put it..."I dunno; Internet?"

But seriously, there's no significant recycling of solar panels, coal extraction is a known process, and good luck running an industrial economy exclusively on renewables.

[bryanlarsen]

If you're going to make that comparison, you need to compare apples-to-apples and include solar efficiency in the coal too. After all coal's energy originally came from the sun. Plants converted the sunlight into energy at an efficiency of about 1%. A miniscule fraction of that energy went into the plant growth, and then a miniscule fraction of that energy was captured when the plant was converted into coal.

[rs999gti]

> Coal is neither cheap nor abundant in Ireland.

But it is abundant in Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and Poland. Also, there is nuclear power in France.

However, Russia and Ukraine are at war. Germany is willing to go green and destroy itself. EU hates Poland and other east European countries. And EU and the rest of the world can't disassociate nuclear power with weapons.

So I guess EU can enjoy their limited and expensive green energy.

[Qwertious]

>Coal is cheap

No it's not. I'm not talking about the environment either, coal plants are just straight-up more expensive than gas plants and renewables.

Coal plants are necessarily steam turbines and not internal combustion, because coal is filthy and the mercury/sulfur/etc would wreck the guts of any machinery it goes through. Thus, it's only used to boil water.

Gas turbines don't have that problem, so they spin the turbine with the combustion products directly. They're far more efficient, the machines are smaller and cheaper, and because you don't need to wait for a giant kettle to boil before ramping up the power, they're far more flexible and responsive to demand. It also helps that the gas is fed with a gas pipe, whereas coal needs to be fed with a bobcat.

Which is why nobody is building new coal plants - they're way more expensive than gas plants, even if the gas fuel itself is more expensive than coal.

[hihitsdumb]

Nobody is building new coal plants...

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

[Qwertious]

Chinese state govt is building them in response to poorly thought out federal govt incentives. That plus backup plans (since China had plenty of coal but needs to import gas, so it could easily be navally blockaded by the US). Also gas turbines are a specialty of the West (which again doesn't work well geopolitically), and their demand has massively outstripped supply (we're even seeing jet engines being converted into gas turbines) and the order backlog is years out - all of which doesn't jive with China's "build everything right f'n now" strategy.

China is building everything at a pace never before seen in history. Partly because their construction industry is a jobs program, and their economy is so dependent on it that they prefer building things at a loss rather than not building at all. Which is financially dumb, but welcome to politics.

[ting0]

Or perhaps they aren't drowning in propaganda (that they themselves promote in the West), and are happily reaping the rewards of cheap coal and energy production.

By the way, the round trip of: Sell and export your coal to manufacturers that burn that coal to produce electronic goods that produce energy, then buy that energy technology to power your own infrastructure, is certainly not cheaper than just burning the coal you mined yourself for your energy production.

Cheaper (ergo, more profitable) for the mining companies, yes. That's about it though.

[tpm]

They are replacing old dirty plants. Actual coal burned is not rising anymore.

[hihitsdumb]

So they are building new coal plants.

[pcchristie]

Building coal plants doesn't impact emissions (materially, anyway). It's the using them to burn coal part that causes emissions (and generates electricity).

[avianlyric]

Yes, many of which are expected to never actually be used. Accidental result of how China does its provence based infra funding.

Right now China is building out more solar and wind per year than than the entire total deployed solar and wind in the entire UK, and they’re only getting fast. Their ability build renewables now vastly outstrips their historical coal buildout and their rising energy demands. They’re well on their way to achieving net zero far faster than anyone thought was possible.

[vladms]

> 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]

Way to high compared to actual cost. Almost half of fuel and electricity costs in Germany is tax.

[pocksuppet]

If it's due to tax it can't be used to advocate the pros or cons of market arrangements, since we don't know what the market would be doing in the absence of the tax.

[eloisant]

It's because of the rules of the European Energy Market where all electricity has to be as expensive as the most expensive source.

So as soon as Germany lights up their gas powerplants, that follow gas prices (wars, etc), French nuclear electricity has to be sold for the same price.

[tonfa]

> rules of the European Energy Market where all electricity has to be as expensive as the most expensive source.

aren't all/most electricity market working this way (pricing based on marginal price, aka pay-as-clear)?

pay-as-bid has other potential issues and might not be better.

[Qwertious]

>It's because of the rules of the European Energy Market where all electricity has to be as expensive as the most expensive source.

Are you talking about the marginal cost? Don't blame the govt, blame the economics textbook.

[sollewitt]

If you don't count the externalities, sure. Healthcare is a cost too. We need more holistic accounting, the financialising of everything into a tidy but ultimately false P&L column is literally killing us.

[svilen_dobrev]

here some comparison chart, 2nd image in the article below:

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/th...

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

there are 2-2.5x times differences between highest and lowest, of 25-30 countries

And here is some current/future (??) prices/increases, which i have no idea where they come from:

https://euenergy.live/

[linhns]

> Coal is cheap, abundant, energy dense.

Nuclear defeats coal in all of these aspects, aside from the high upfront cost.

[ljf]

Upfront costs... then running costs (in the UK at least, it has to command a premium over other energy prices, to be profitable)... afterwards costs (in the UK no private company is on the hook for decommissioning their nuclear plants, the population will pick up that cost through taxes)...

But sure, nuclear is cheap if you ignore all those things.

[idiotsecant]

We're already ignoring them all for coal plants, why not?

[ljf]

Which to we ignore for coal? Cost to build a new plant? Cost to run? The decommissioning costs? (Yes we ignore the externalities, and no I don't think we should burn coal. My point is Nuclear has yet to pay its way anywhere in the world, without heavy heavy govt support - far exceeding that given to renewables)

Some figures on running costs: Coal costs about £62 per MWh - (£31 for the coal and £31 for the CO2 premium we already charge the energy producers).

As a fossil fuel comparison, Gas costs about £114 per MWh.

Nuclear - Hinkley C will cost about £128 per MWh - but likely to be even higher when it comes online. And we will be on the hook for this price as long as it runs, no matter how cheap renewables are.

[AnthonyMouse]

> As a fossil fuel comparison, Gas costs about £114 per MWh.

You're comparing the cost for coal as baseload to the cost for natural gas as a peaker plant. When using both for baseload, natural gas is cheaper than coal and emits less CO2.

Meanwhile renewables are cheaper than both until they represent enough of the grid that you have to contend with intermittency:

https://www.ourworldofenergy.com/images/electrical-power-gen...

Which doesn't happen until it gets close to being a majority of generation, and which most countries aren't at yet so can add more without incurring significant costs for firming.

In other words, the currently cheapest way to operate a power grid, if that's all you care about, is to have something like half renewables and half natural gas. Add some nuclear -- even just, don't remove any -- and CO2 goes down by a lot because then you're only using natural gas for peaking/firming instead of baseload, while still having costs in line with historical norms.

The obviously bad thing many places are doing is shutting down older power plants without building enough new capacity in anything else to meet existing demand, and then prices go up. But that's not because you're using e.g. solar instead of coal, it's because you're trying to use demand suppression through higher prices instead of coal. It's easy to get rid of coal as long as you actually build something else.

[idiotsecant]

>Which to we ignore for coal? Cost to build a new plant? Cost to run? The decommissioning costs? (Yes we ignore the externalities, and no I don't think we should burn coal. My point is Nuclear has yet to pay its way anywhere in the world, without heavy heavy govt support - far exceeding that given to renewables)

Yes, all three. Building a nuke plant without the additional concern for outcome that we put on nuke would be relatively inexpensive. It's just concrete, pumps, and a turbine. It's a ismilar level of complexity to a coal plant. Same with running cost, same with decommissioning costs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly...

Suppose we designed, operated, and budgeted every coal plant to make accidents like this a statistical impossibility. Not very unlikely, that's not the standard we hold nuke to. An impossiblity. Imagine what that would cost.

[wat10000]

Coal is teetering on the edge of economic viability. In the US, our coal-obsessed administration is now at the point of forcing coal power plants to remain operational against the wishes of their owners who want to shut them down as they’re no longer profitable.

[cguess]

> Coal is cheap

Only if you ignore all externalities including:

- environmental damage from mining (yes this exists for renewables too)

- global warming

- pollution on city infrastructure

- pollution on health

- the sunk costs causing higher transition costs when inevitably you transfer to renewables anyways.

[Qwertious]

>Only if you ignore all externalities

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

[dylan604]

> Only if you ignore all externalities

Do not discount how easy that is to do. Your list is of costs not to any bottom line of a company with bean counters. Those external costs are out side the scope of their concerns. Your list of concerns would be something for C-suite types, but the pressure of stock prices again make the external costs easy to set aside.

[cguess]

Sure, but as a consumer you can also care about these things.

[dylan604]

Sure, but there's only so many places to buy electricity from

[Schlagbohrer]

If Israel can build an electrical grid connection to Greece then Ireland should have no problem building good connections with France and the UK.

[TechnicalVault]

They do have 3 already and they're building 3 more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-voltage_transmiss...

The new one going to France will probably have the most impact initially, the French love to sell their Nuke's surplus capacity. The new British ones by the time they're finished should have access to British's big wind energy generation, much of which will be online at that point.

[Gareth321]

The argument that Ireland’s high costs are primarily due to low population density is a common oversimplification. While Ireland is rural, countries like Finland and Sweden have significantly lower population densities and more challenging geography, yet they consistently maintain lower residential and industrial electricity prices. The issue isn't where the people live. It's the gold-plating of the network. Ireland’s regulatory framework allows EirGrid and ESB Networks to pass massive capital expenditure costs directly to the consumer with guaranteed returns, leading to a build-at-any-cost mentality that density doesn't justify.

The claim of "previous underinvestment" ignores the massive capital outlays of the last decade. Ireland has actually seen massive investment in its grid to accommodate renewables, but the efficiency of that spend is questionable. We have a "constraint payment" system where we pay wind farms not to produce power when the grid is congested. In 2023 alone, these payments reached hundreds of millions of euros. This isn't "underinvestment". It's an operational failure to align generation with grid capacity, a cost that is hidden in the consumer's bill.

You suggest that "saving the world harder" (more renewables) would have lowered prices. This ignores the Marginal Pricing Model. In the Single Electricity Market (SEM), the price of electricity is set by the most expensive generator needed to meet demand - which is almost always a gas-fired plant. Therefore, even if wind provides 80% of the power at a given moment, consumers often still pay the "gas price" for all of it. Adding more renewables without reforming the marginal price auction system does nothing to lower the immediate cost to the consumer. It just increases the profit margins for renewable operators.

I should also comment on the source of that report: Nevin Economic Research Institute (NERI). NERI is not a neutral academic body. It is the research arm of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU). NERI’s research is fundamentally rooted in Social Democratic and Labor-centric economics. Their reports consistently advocate for increased public spending and state intervention. By focusing on "underinvestment" and "network costs," NERI shifts the blame away from the policy failures of the green transition and toward a narrative that justifies more state-led infrastructure spending. They often downplay the impact of aggressive carbon taxing and the "Public Service Obligation" (PSO) levy, which are direct policy choices that have inflated Irish bills compared to the EU average.

Finally, the "poor connections to neighbors" argument is becoming obsolete. With the Greenlink and Celtic Interconnector (to France) coming online, Ireland is becoming one of the most strategically connected islands in Europe. If isolation were the primary driver, prices should be falling as these projects near completion. Instead, they remain the highest in the EU (often 40-50% above the average). The "island" excuse is a convenient shield for domestic policy inefficiencies.

[weirdmantis69]

Your link is from a disreputable source though. Their literal purpose is to gaslight people.