"Green" policies are destroying this country

In a sensible world the government would have been properly incentivising all of the rooftops to be covered in Solar which would have a zero impact on agriculture.

Assume solar has a payback time of 10 years on average. The state could install PV and inverters and batteries on people's houses and commercial premises for free. They own all the power for the first 5 years (no feed in tariff) and the state can draw from the batteries as needed but from year 6 the household/business gets the feed in tariff deducted from their energy bills

There are already solar leasing plans similar to this but being commercial makes them less attractive as the company has to make a profit while the state can do it below cost.

In the medium term. Highly distributed local generation provides so many efficiency benefits to the grid.

Then there's wind microgenerators which could significantly reduce our winter power demands if most suitable sites had an installation with the same economic model. We have lots of viable designs that are safe for wildlife and do not have much noise pollution

Most of those wildlife friendly or low noise/visual impact turbine designs are awful in practice, piss poor efficiency and gearboxes end up costing more power than they generate in some cases.

I do agree about the state putting solar on houses (provided its backed up with batteries also), however this would only work as a public tender and not the current subsidies/grants model, as grants inevitably lead to prices rising by the amount of the grant. Happens all the time in this country, recently with solar and retrofit grants.

Is the ten years payback time for panels alone or with batteries? Doesn't a Tesla power wall still cost more than $10k? Also, with all those inverters and other electronics, plus installation, it's hard to see how paying for individual solar would make more sense than a utility-scale farm? However, my impression is the battery cost would be prohibitive for either individuals or at utility scale.

saw a figure of .06% somewhere

If I was rich I wouldn't have to do the daily slog every week. So I could have a roof over my head and feed myself.

Yes theres extreme poverty in the world but to say average joe is rich by living here is extreme exaggeration.

Its still .1 of a percent , totally irrelevant so why destroy our economy to achieve a green wet dream

Thats living standards not wealth.

Pretty sure if i was wealthy and lived in theses places. My living standards would be limited also compared to being wealthy living here.

My heating came on this morning for a short while. The weather app says it's likely to rain for the next week solid, so I suspect this won't be the only time this coming week.

Parisennes were wading through knee deep flooded streets and many more areas of France had flood warnings. I guess that whole Europe turning into a desert after burning to the ground thing will have to wait for some other year. Warnings from Australia they might be due a rather wet summer, after one of the wettest years on record. I guess the predictions of climate change induced drought, increasing heat and fires will have to wait for some other year.

Perhaps we should go back to living in caves. Would that keep you happy.

We produce enough food to feed how many people? If we stop doing that our emissions will drop but somebody else's will rise to replace the short fall in food.

A government Minister involved in the horse breeding sector to examine ways to help the horse breeding sector. No conflict of interest there!

It’s all relevant.

Just because people earn decent money in Ireland doesn’t mean they are rich!

Most people are up to their neck in mortgage debt just to keep a roof over their heads.

Then add on car loans to get to work to pay the mortgage.

Most people aren’t rich.

The rest of the EU are not implementing our crazy policies... germany are back burning coal because needs must. 75 percent of Poland's energy comes from coal which they are actually going to import from Colombia because it's too expensive to extract their own so I would love someone to explain how they are meeting the EU targets. I would imagine it's creative accountancy where they are offsetting it all by buying carbon credits off some African dictator. A load of bullshit

We are as bad as Switzerland and Denmark, currently, and have only output about two thirds of what Denmark has in total since 1750. Any other straw men you want me to burn?

Fair going for someone who was on 17,060 gross per annum from a county council seat getting gifted a Seanad seat worth 70,870 and in less than a wet week gets appointed to a Junior Minister post worth 141,657 while gifting her husband the 17.060 council seat .All above come with extra add on little goodies as well.

For a party that was so critical of nepotism in politics it didn`t take long for that tune to change.