"Green" policies are destroying this country

...it would need to be multiples of billions, as an astonishing amount of offshore and onshore infrastructure would need to be built, but once built and up and running, these would then become new state assets, helping to provide energy for further economic activities, and in return we would be less exposed to international energy markets, which is in fact one of the main causes of our current inflationary problems....

the current rate of government borrowing is so low, roughly 2% fixed, for such investments, that the debts required to do so, could be paid back within a few years of operations, so win win!

wouldnt have a clue tbh, but lonergan and sawers work might fill in some of the gaps there, longeran explains very well how this all could be funded

im not convinced a 100% system is possible, but the interconnects might fill in the gaps there, and ultimately nuclear for the long term, but it will probably be a very long time before that reality is truly accepted here....

sawers is also a consultant engineer to governments for energy systems, so......

See this is the problem - how can we all get on board the offshore wind plan when no-one seems able to answer, or even guesstimate to the nearest billion even:

• How much do we need to invest to meet today's grid demand with fossil backup 365 days of the year?
• How much do we need to invest to meet expected demand by 2030 for 365 days of the year with fossil backup? Accounting for 1m EV's and 600k heat-pumps.

That's just to get through the "now" while we still have oil and gas.

Then we need to figure out how we remove fossil fuel completely from the grid. The simple answer is we find some means of running all of the windfarms at whatever they're capable of capturing at a given moment and then storing that energy in some sort of intermediary buffer which we can use to generate the electricity when it's actually demanded and not only when the wind blows strong enough.

The most promising means at the moment seems to be hydrogen, because it can be fired in existing gas turbines as well as being suitable for most modern domestic heating boilers, but:

• It's still in its relative infancy, round-trip efficiency can be right down into the low teens, depending on application. How much excess input energy capacity will we need to be able to produce it in sufficient usable quantities for real world application?
• Efficiency may improve and offshore wind may produce far more electricity than we could ever use day to day. We could strike it lucky and be mass producing hydrogen for a global market and making an absolute fortune - but no-one seems to know that with any sort of certainty.

How we can therefore accept we have to commit to spending untold billions investing in wind in the not at all confident hope that it will even meet our basic day to day domestic energy needs, never mind make some sort of a return on it, I just don't know? Meanwhile there is outright refusal to consider alternative sources of energy like nuclear, or to consider we may need to increase our use of fossil fuels for another decade or two. It's a massive gamble to be making.

Yes for the Seanad not the Dail. That it is a very exclusive voting public does not make her unelected.

There are so many scenarios that are worse than having blackouts. That's when we need to assign risk ratings. Low impact high likelihood events, high impact low probability events etc. We cannot mitigate all risk. We need to prioritise resources based on risk.

If the government think there's a 5% chance of power shortages this winter then we can take a gamble. If it's a 50% chance then we spend a lot of resources to mitigate that risk

LOL. The total electorate for that panel is around 1,100. If she got 76,000 FPV then we need a recount.

She was elected on the 20th count with 76 votes. 19 short of the quota.

Each vote was multiplied by 1000 because the numbers eligible to vote were so few, transfers otherwise would have to be expressed in decimal points.

The vast majority of such infrastructures at present are privately owned, as are those approved in May this year under RESS 2 so none of those asset would be state assets. We could possibly use a compulsory purchase order to buy them, but I imagine that would be tricky and would result in private investors having no further interest. We will already be borrowing to upgrade the grid so to go it on our own would leave the cost astronomical would it not as we do not even know what capacity is required from renewables to achieve 100% let alone the cost ?

TBH a number would have the same relevance as the base plate capacity number on a wind turbine. Worth nothing when there is little or no wind. A percentage number on blackouts would be the same as it would not represent the harm such blackouts could do to our economy as regards future investments. Something the IDA have been warning about recently.

She got 5 percent of the vote in the last general election so colour it whatever way you want she was not elected in the last general election. Fact check

The Greens are very quiet on this energy fiasco we now find ourselves in.

Reality punching them in the face and they've clearly calculated the best approach is to lay low.

You learn something new every day.

Their answer will be throw more money at the problem.

this is our future