"Green" policies are destroying this country

There is no such thing as a completely reliable energy source. During the 'Beast from the East' the grid would have failed as these 'reliable' power plants went offline, and if it wasn't for the wind power generated there would have been blackouts

Nuclear power plants need to be taken offline for maintenance so do Oil and Gas, Nuclear power is dependent on fuel from volatile parts of the world, so are oil and gas. In Texas last winter, Nuclear power plants shut down due to excessive cold that caused their water supply to freeze, Oil and Gas plants also shut down, and the renewable power system were operating below capacity due to ice and snow, as well as the lack of interconnectivity that caused the grid to fail.

What we need to do is construct a modern energy infrastructure and build in safeguards to trade power when there are local shortages. The grid needs to be modernised anyway, we might as well do it properly and use primarily renewable energy, with storage and interconnections to balance our our supply when we have excess or deficit in local power generation

Right now we waste a lot of the renewable energy capacity as the turbines shut down when we don't need them, while gas and oil are kept running because it takes them longer to 'spool up' Its the opposite of what we should be doing. But transitioning takes investment, and expertise and engineering know how. Getting it right will serve future generations with cheap reliable abundant energy. Getting it wrong or failing to modernise at all will lead to the worst of all worlds.

Nuclear is not a good fit for Ireland, We're simply too small for the current generation of reactors, and it is not economically viable for us to re-process or store our own nuclear waste or transport it safely to a foreign reprocessing center

Nuclear powerplants need to be taken down for maintenance, what would we do then, buy all of our power from abroad? that would require many more interconnectors than we already have, plus if we're doing that, why not just buy nuclear from a bigger market that can run it more efficiently.

Ireland has a really good wind power resource that could enable us to become net energy exporters and really benefit from the green energy revolution. Irish people being opposed to renewable energy are nothing but useful idiots of the oil and gas industry. You're just repeating the lies and propaganda that has been pushed down your throat for decades.

Australia have shown how to handle abundant renewable energy. Southern Australia capable of being 100% wind and solar powered and has now the 2nd cheapest and most reliable energy in the continent, with costs per KWh continuing to fall as the infrastructure comes on line. so much so that they are wondering what to do with all the excess power they can generate. They're re-greening the desert by desalinating water, and are planning on exporting hydrogen made from solar power and sea water which will really help with our transition to 21st century energy systems.

The person advocating increasing taxes and reducing welfare for couples who have more than 1 child is not a green activist, they are almost certainly making these points in an entirely disingenuous way because they are 'economic libertarians' who want maximal benefit from their own life choices, while minimal benefit to anyone who is in any way not them

Western populations are declining in general btw, and 'developing countries' populations are still increasing. Not because they're dole spongers, but because of a whole host of reasons relating to lack of education, opportunity, healthcare, womens rights etc etc.

If these fake greens actually cared about population growth, then they would be screaming about reversing cuts to development aid, and calling for 'the west' to make much more efforts to improve the educational and economic opportunities for women and girls in these countries.

That too, but your income goes down by 10% after 1 kid. Basically like the carbon tax. The more you use the more you pay.

This is not the solution

Instead of punishing the young people who want to start a small family, we have billionaires controlling the vast majority of economic activity on this planet who are capable of making choices that will make a very real difference to global carbon emissions. These people need to be targetted and the only way we have of doing this, is to get our politicians to pass regulations that hugely punish them for the pollution caused by their economic activity. If Jeff Bezos had to pay for the environmental cost of his business, he would change a lot of his business practises, and stop promoting useless tat on Amazon that is profitable now only because the cost of production is dumped into the air and water

It has to be global transnational activity, because if only one company or government acts, then they'll just be forced out of the market and others will fill the gap with just as polluting activities.

If everyone in the 'west' was forced to have 1 child, but still had massive disposable incomes and nothing was done to stop wasteful production and industry from polluting the air sea and land, then parents would just take the income they would have spent on their 2nd child, and buy more sh1t and take more flights, and build bigger more wasteful houses etc

The most wasteful people per capita, are the people to whom money is not an object. If you're a poor struggling family with 10 kids, you're going to use less carbon resources than the millionaires with 1 or zero kids, who go on ski trips and cruises, weekend breaks and have holiday homes, multiple cars per person on the driveway etc etc etc

Amber, confusingly, is actually the lowest level of alert that EirGrid use. So lets not get panicked into thinking the whole grid is about to collapse

Something is being done, just not fast enough

We need multiple more of these interconnectors, as well as offshore wind, storage, and we need to fast track them through planning because at the moment every nimby with a country estate is objecting to every single pylon at every stage of the planning process.

This is the solution, not more oil, turf, oil and gas indefinitely until half the country is made up of drumlins cut off by the rising seas

Exactly if you do the lecturing you must expect blowback when you are been a hypocrite.

The burning straw on the news was some laugh

There's no recent "Amber" alerts. That term was phased out over a year ago to match European terminology. Anyone who uses it just demonstrates how little they understand the problem because they have been informed by a clueless media. Read the information for yourself. Eirgrid and CRU publish lots of really interesting stuff. I googled "Eirgrid system defence plan" and learned loads.

Power System Alerts can be for a variety of reasons, anything from phones not working to weather to insufficient reserve or margins.

The only time to worry is when the system moves to "Emergency state" because that implies reasons like load shedding has happened or could happen in the next 4 hours, that Eirgrid have no visibility of the system or someone has died.

Thats a false dichotomy.

Nothing will be achieved by sinking tens of billions of euros and decades of our time into building infrastructure that does not suit our economy

Ireland should produce offshore wind and sell it to the EU, and then import Nuclear power from the EU when we need backup.

A typical nuclear plant will power about a million households. Ireland has about 2 million households. A single nuclear powerplant is too much of a proportion of our overall energy requirement that it would represent a massive risk if something were to cause a Nuclear power plant to unexpectedly go down. In bigger countries, the risk is distributed more widely, so they can afford to lose a plant or two and not become an instant crisis

Power stations do go out of service multiple times a year, sometimes planned maintenance, other times critical failures that cause the plant to shut down.

You really need to take this seriously instead of just throwing out the deliberately trolling nonsense from people who are clearly not environmentalists, and are just doing their best to muddy the argument so people just get sick of the topic and move on.

The usual moronic answer you get here and on the journal is - build nuclear, reduce world population, then I wont have to change absolutely anything about my life, as if it's a panacea for everything.

It's actually hopeless discussing these things with people who can't fathom any kind of inconvenience or hardships for the greater good. Snowflakes.