"Green" policies are destroying this country

LCOE is a method of comparing the cost of production, not the value associated with the energy produced. There are other metrics used to compare the value associated with the energy produced which mostly comes down to the avoided cost by having that electricity produced. This value goes down the more renewable energy there is in the grid, and will until there is sufficient storage capacity on the grid. This storage can be dispatchable renewable (e.g. hydro or pumped hydro), batteries (although this could really only be a small amount to cover evening peaks or other short periods of under-production; They are not viable for anything other than short term storage) or to some form of H2 storage (either as H2 or further processed to eFuel of some kind).

Encouraging demand shifting is also necessary to balance usage with production. In the UK there were a number of people using the Octopus Agile tariff, which has prices changing every half hour. For a consumer with a home storage battery, it was possible to charge this up in time periods where the price was low (and at times, negative) to cover home use during more expensive periods, or to put back out to the grid at times when the price was high. If enough people do this, then the grid is more stable and a lower amount of grid level storage is required. This doesn't solve the problem of medium/longer term storage for multi-day periods of low renewable output.

Our grid is not at the moment capable of running in this manner, but I don't think that creating new nuclear power plants is the solution. The nuclear industry keeps saying that the cost of new nuclear is falling as they've learned lessons from previous reactor installations, but any that have been produced have come in over budget and behind schedule. If the reactors are small, then the cost per MW installed, and thus the cost per MWh produced over the lifetime of the plant goes up, and if the reactors are large, then, if installed in Ireland, they need backup power to the same extent as wind. There is also the lead time for a new nuclear plant. If a decision was made today to construct a nuclear plant in Ireland, it would probably be 2040 before there was any power generation from that plant. I think existing ones should be kept running for their design life. The German decision to close all of their nuclear power plants was, in my opinion, premature. There should have been a greater emphasis on how to store excess renewable generation prior to removing nuclear power.

H2 costs aren't completely unknown. They are high in the absence of excess renewable power. It won't have any viability unless there is a surplus of renewable energy and a market that doesn't require excess transport of H2. H2 also has problems in it's volumetric energy density and it's unclean combustion when burned with air.

Well of course its cheapest when mother nature provides the fuel but wind and solar wreak havoc on electricity grids designed for consistent predictable demand and supply that traditional power stations allow, the reality is Europe will always have a mix of gas and nuclear in the grids to fill the gaps from renewables and redundancy (its not impossible for battery backup or otherwise storage of renewables to run out during a particularly bad weather period) , gas actually being the least worst option versus oil/coal/peat but all this shenanigans with Russia and EU gas dependence might bring nuclear back into play in a big way.

So yeah wind might be cheapest but its definitely not the best.

The anti nuclear claims about time, cost and schedule are all based on recent projects in Europe. It's not all by any means.

The UAEs Barakah Nuclear power plant took nine years from ground break to first stage grid connection - and that's with it being a whole 2 years behind schedule. The obvious solution is to get the Koreans to build them. So 9 years shouldn't translate to an inevitable 2040 if the government were of a mind to prevent and exclude the usual stuffing around. And even so - 2040 is zero CO2 a decade ahead of the current 2050 schedule. How do people who are concerned by CO2 see that as a bad thing?

If you think H2 storage will be up and running with nuclear levels of performance by 2040, you are more optimistic than I am.

Work has been done on identifying the reasons for nuclear program cost and time blowouts and those findings can be used to minimise or eliminate them in the future. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/MIT-study-focuses-on-reasons-behind-new-build-cost

More than 40% of irielands electricity is wind generated. Where have you obtained the 3.9% figure from?

Is there such a thing? I've never encountered a rural dweller living off the land or one that was eco friendly.

Not this again. The services already exist. My house was connected to phone and power lines that have existed since those services were first put in many decades ago to service the farms on the road I live on. Even if my house had been built inside the M50, a line would have had to be run to the nearest ESB duct or pole. There - is - no - difference.

You have this idea of roads being constructed and new lines of poles and wires being run, everytime someone builds a one off. It just doesn't happen. The service are just as shared rurally as they are in Dublin or Cork.

And before you start with the lies about road maintenance - passenger cars do not damage rural roads. Road damage is a fourth power function of vehicle weight. Because of it's weight, a tractor driving past a one off rural house, and then back again, does more damage to the road surface than the householder's car does commuting in more than a year. A milk-tanker, or truck carrying feed, or fertiliser, going past is decades worth. A milk-tanker passes my house every day and does a couple decades worth of damage each time.

As for water - I and nobody else - paid for a well to be drilled and for the pump and pipes. The ESB hasn't set foot on my property in over two decades.

So you think if everyone lived in one off housing, rather than in urban areas, it would be better for our carbon emissions and for land usage etc?