"Green" policies are destroying this country

And they eat avocados. Lots of them apparently....

Yes, there's a world of difference between the Green Party now and the Green Party I was in, when Patricia McKenna and others were around. They've embraced some form of technological urban based future.

RTÉ are at it again. Pushing the Green agenda.

Some old farmer in the mountains of Kerry was given a free electric car to test and he’s on spouting about how great it is.

I wonder who in the ESB or RTÉ he’s related to.

Hardly a charger around my area yet we’re all being pushed as hard as possible to go green.

And what infrastructure upgrades do we need to support this? How much will it cost? Remember the plan calls for nearly a million battery powered electric vehicles (BEV). Imagine a typical suburban estate where everyone returns from work, his and her cars, they plug in the BEV after 9PM (to avoid peak usage charges) what will happen to the local distribution network when this clustering effect occurs?

Add more than one electric car to the same local transformer (charge clustering) and overloading is more likely to occur. This causes damage to the electrical equipment which reduces the lifespan and can result in outages and added costs. The risk of overloading local transformers is particularly high during peak hours. When all electric vehicles owners in a single area recharge at the same time. . . .

It’s going to take smart charging apps that book your charging slot according to assorted criteria – trying to share out the local cable capacity, which is going to be a major constraint, as well as the general level of load at the grid level, and the availability or not of surplus wind etc. The tariffs will be highly variable. You may be permitted a 3kW trickle charge for no premium, which is probably good enough for a short distance commuter.

But who knows were we will end up if we have days of €400/MWh day ahead prices? Add in another €100-150/MWh for the other elements of the electricity bill and you’re looking at higher mileage costs than a diesel.

All the above is without considering electrifying heating with heat pumps. Is the local infrastructure present to support this increased demand with 600,000 heat pumps targeted in the next 8 years.

Off the top of my head two future scenarios I can think of that will create sudden demand surges in future.

• Met Eireann issues a warning for storm force winds with widespread power cuts expected. Everyone charges in advance and gets tasks that use electricity (clothes washing and drying) out of the way. You often see this with gas (Petrol) stations in the South-East of the United States (Florida, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina) when a mass evacuation happens in advance of a severe hurricane warning.
• Another potential weather scenario is the "beast from the east" type cold events where demand for electricity is driven up. To date record demand to date in Ireland was 6,878 MW on December 21st 2020, 17:30. Per Met Eireann it was a cold month.

• Bank holiday weekends where people en-masse on the East coast of Ireland decamp to the West and will need a full charge to complete the journey. Even concerts or All-Ireland weekends when some counties make the pilgrimage to Croke park may have localised effects on the grid.

That might be one of the effects of demand-side management. The price of a KwH of electricity can only rise due to the combination of infrastructure investment required to cope with the new loads, the costs of the low density generation (Wind and Solar) and the management cost overhead of random energy, Eirgrid will need synchronous condensers to manage this. That's why the smart meters are necessary to curb demand side consumption by price mechanisms, therefore the deciding factor will be a trade off between the cost of distance travelled between electricity and diesel/petrol. Generators are used today as standby generation or remote sites that don't have power, If we ever get to a South African power grid situation with regular rolling blackouts then their use would indeed increase. Aside from the costs the nightmare scenario for us in Ireland can happen due to intense winter cold where the grid is dependent on random energy generation (Solar in Winter months forget about it for 2 months of the year) and the wind may not always blow. . . . and the target is 70% random energy by 2030.

I don't actually mind them doing too many of these “world is doomed” articles. It's very much in vogue and some people get a bit of a rush out of reading them! My problem is that they are just not looking at questions that need to be answered.

Firstly, where is the infrastructure or at least a plan for infrastructure?

Secondly, what progress has been made on any of these plans?

Finally, how much is this going to cost each and every individual?

All those competitions last year, people took the money, large percentage of the population are indebted to a huge level, Green taxes will make the maintenance of those debts difficult, another bank bailout anyone,

The price of a KWH 'can only rise' only if the market doesn't adapt.

Currently we're dependent on a few oligarchs setting the price of energy, deliberately setting the price at a level that allows them to dominate global supply.

Renewables will change this dynamic completely where we are no longer dependent on a couple of pipelines controlled by despots with prices set by OPEC, and energy is traded on the basis of many smaller actors working independently

If it becomes a thing where prices spike every time there's a public holiday or bad weather alert, then this represents an opportunity for private companies to create infrastructure to buy the energy cheaply, and then sell it when the price goes up. Where there is money to be made, people will make the investments

Rather than have noisy dirty diesel generators backing up power, which will hopefully be so swamped in carbon taxes that they're not worth it anymore, companies will have tanks of Hydrogen and generate power on site using fuel cells.

Hydrogen can be generated when there is an over supply of renewable energy. We have seen zero unit price of electricity in the EU already, and even negative unit prices on more than one occasion. (Companies were being paid to use the surplus energy from renewables)

A country the size of Ireland might only need 20 of these fast charging stations set up along motorways to facilitate long distance travel across the vast majority of the country. It would make sense for these stations to have fuel cells or batteries on site so they can take advantage of the swings in the price of electricity to balance out their load.

None of this is new technology.

A mass cull of all the people in Ireland would do nothing to change the climate either.

But I suppose taxing them will.

Like the people saying oh think of the children. Im thinking my kids are going to be worried more in a few years about the high taxes in the name of environmentalism than, they will be worried about climate change. I already know a lot of people who are being taxed through the nose and have had enough of this environmentalist taxes that keep popping up too.

Lots of people that consider themselves ‘green’ are still planning a foreign holiday, further than before too if they saved during lockdown. It would be interesting to go through the protesters social media and see which have and still are holidaying abroad.

I’m sure it’s the same in this thread too. Unless you are willing to make the change yourself then you can’t expect others to make major lifestyle changes.

Yeah its like tax. People want tax increased for those who earn more than them.

Its the same with asking people to cut back. For example you would have someone who cant afford to fly 4 times a year moaning that someone else should pay more tax or be stopped flying 4 times a year. Whe they do reach a stage that they can afford to fly 4 times a year they will be flying 4 times a year and moaning about the tax on it then.

Oh that's nice that you can just manifest these green people going on holidays into existence. I suppose they live on a diet of almond milk and avocados flown in from Peru too?

We don't have the tech to completely replace it. We do absolutely have the tech to stop/reverse climate change.

Solar/Nuclear* combined with Storage either batteries or pumped-storage hydroelectricity

I'd have an electric car/motorcycle if I could afford one. I genuinely would. (An electric motorcycle is about €28,000 though, the equivalent petrol powered machine is around €15,000)

As I said, I'd have my south facing roof covered in solar if it wasn't so fricken expensive.

These things are expensive as there are lots of middle men trying t make a quick buck off it.

Obviously there are some things like large cargo ships that will need to run on fossil fuel put perhaps they could run on petrol in the years to come as opposed to fuel oil (once most of the worlds cars move to electric) Ironically large cargo ships used to be power by wind and sail 100's of years ago

* Note: I do not think Ireland should use Nuclear power not because I'm against it, but because the average Irish person is very complacent. We'd defo end up with a disaster.

Be careful what you wish for as regards air travel.

As an island nation with a long history of emigration we have a good reason to maintain connectivity.

Also our tourist industry relies heavily on air transport.

I'm pretty sure Greta doesn't fly? Are you suggesting people need to stay within a certain KM radius to be taken seriously even if they travel by bus or rail? People need to travel, people need to cut down on air travel too. Some important people like world leaders will always need to fly.

Where are all these people who hop off their bikes and fly across the planet? You know people like this?

Walk the walk if you talk the talk. You can video conference for most of this stuff. Lead by example if you want others to change.

I’m not a green zealot, and not particularly fond of flying.

As the biggest green conference in years it was a great opportunity to show alternatives. It simply raises the question as why these green conferences are not video conferences. Not just this one but any of the others. Even more so those organised by climate change activists.