"Green" policies are destroying this country

no what my parish shows is the problem with not encouraging people to live in an actual village itself. When they clamped down on drink driving there wasn’t enough people within walking distance to sustain the pub, then once the pub went it wasn’t long before the shop was gone too. yet in that time there’s been plenty of houses built within a mile of the village and the local school actually got a new classroom. Everyone just drives to the nearest town now for a loaf of bread, and even then it’s mostly thr petrol stations on the outskirts that are busiest. The town itself is slowly dying from the inside out. It’s the same up and down the country.

Many of those country towns central business districts are built around a market square. It's been a long time since the farmers drove their cattle in there and made deals in the pubs surrounding them. It is a long time since travelling traders set out their stalls in those squares. Mostly those squares have become levied car parking zones. The traders that bought people into the area are gone, so are the businesses that depended on the custom the traders bought, closed as their proprietors & customers retired and died off. The banks are mostly gone or automated and will no longer handle cash. Except maybe to visit the local solicitor, or be out on a Friday night, there is very little reason to be in such a town center these days, count the fast food outlets. The internet, Amazon and mail order delivery has probably been the final straw, I seldom have to go through a local middleman any more, which is really what many of the shopkeepers in those towns were (buy from wholesaler, add markup, but what value?).

Speaking of the local village, when I came to Ireland years ago. The village had 4 shops (convenience stores in modern terminology) and 4 pubs (1 doubling as a shop, another with a post office). It had a creamery, Garda station, GAA club, Church, national school, petrol station, post office and a dance hall. The post office and Garda station are gone, nearest Garda presence is 20 KM away. The pubs went quickly due to a combination of Mr. Ross, age of the proprietors and the improved roads that allowed a gang from Cork city, to raid the last publican, beat and tie him up, he quit and died soon afterwards. The shop became a funeral home until its proprietor also died and the Church is struggling due to lack of priests combined with the Covid lockdowns that have scared many of the elderly people away, they now listen to mass on the radio or watch it on iPad. The local cooperatives sold out to the the larger groups mostly Kerry group and for a while became farming supply depots, but even they have closed. Only the GAA and national school remains which have expanded since I came here.

Economically, this area have been subject to several economic shocks and booms that have all forced a change in direction. In the early 19th century this parish had a population of ~7,000. It had a "vibrant" village that got washed away when the local river burst its banks in 1839 (Oíche na Gaoithe Móire). The "village" moved to higher ground and spread out in a more ribbon fashion. A few years later there was the 1840s famine. There are no buildings that survive built prior to the 1840s, as you might imagine being sited in the hills the material used was recycled in later years to build ditches in the period of the lands acts. The parish also has a police barracks housing the Royal Irish Constabulary, they were armed for good reason, the Landlords agent was assassinated by a gang from this parish whose descendants are big farmers today (yes, they are FG supporters.)

Needless to say the economic disaster of the 1840-1850s (famine, disease, unemployment) set in motion a mass migration out of the area. Fortunes turned around after the 1870s up to Irish independence. This is the era of the land acts, it is this period that the land tracts were laid out, the local creamery co-operatives were built and the GAA established. Employment in the area revolves around farming, a lot of labour is needed to milk cows, maintain horses and equipment(e.g. blacksmith).

In this period food and heating (wood & turf) were all locally sourced except for luxuries like tea and sugar. The local towns functioned as the cattle markets in the square and pubs were deals were made abounded, the banks are there too and so are the drapers, the shoe repairmen and other small businesses that served the cattlemen.

After the civil war DeValera started trade wars and launched his Green new deal (then called it autarky then), with a self sufficient Agrarian economy, except they still needed fossil fuels from the old enemy. That set off a wave of migration to the United States in particular and post world war II to Britain. Pursuit if this policy collapsed the country by 1957 and prompted a major change in direction. That is the period of the 1963 planning act and the corruption that followed. The late 60s through 1970s saw many Irish people return from the UK and set-up their own business in rural Ireland, and bore "the popes children". Many were then crushed by the 1979 crash, oil embargo followed by the 1980s recession and forced to migrate again, despite the odds (20% interest) some did manage to stick it out and survive. The 1980s was the period that saw the collapse of the local shops, petrol station and lots of sole traders, even the GAA team collapsed when most of the players left for England. Farming continued to evolve and became more mechanised.

The communications boom of the '90s saw many, myself included, migrate to Dublin. That kicked off a building boom , the easy credit, with interest rates falling in anticipation of the Euro introduction and more or less drive a 15 year construction boom, until the bubble burst in 2008. This is the period were the villages current disposition is formed. The garda station, post office and shops closed, while seemingly paradoxically the population grew in rural Ireland. There are a multitude of reasons why rural Ireland and country towns are hollowing out, to put the finger solely on planning does not explain it.

It does not solve the storage problem at all, wind and solar are destabilising grid operations. These are a management overhead and extra cost that need to be borne by electricity consumers.

Remove gas from our grid and use what, can't believe some people here still don't understand that wind and gas don't cut the mustard. Do you want me to put a dummies guide to energy link so you can comprehend ?

But gas is our transitionary fuel and is needed as backup to renewables………….

You seem to keep forgetting this? 🧐

No problem. More windmills is the answer.

Is it just me or does it increasingly look like green policy on energy is based on the belief of one enthusiast of the Discworld series of novels by Terry Pratchett, where this world is supported by four elephants standing on a giant turtle, who when asked what supported the turtle replied " Don`t be silly. It`s turtles all the way down"

But until we get some grid scale storage which doesnt exist yet, adding more renewables to the grid leaves us more reliant on gas for the shortfalls when renewable output dips.

Replacing coal and oil with renewables leaves us more exposed to market gas prices, not less. Not to mention our single gas pipeline through the UK, we are not exactly secure, as the CRU have previously flagged.

From the article "But in order to store enough power to run the country for just one day, we'd need 60 Turlough Hills."

If Turlough hill is 300MW then we need 180,000MW of storage for one day, as things stand we have nowhere near that.

So how are we going to get through this winter? We'll be OK in years to come if we build storage and wind energy. But we need surplace wind to charge the storage and we need something to cover gaps of several days, solar might work in the summer but we need to cover a week of no wind in the winter.

Ok tidal.

What country’s currently have working tidal farms that are generating electricity and commercially viable?

lets copy france so and do nuclear

Energy storage: Lithium ion battery - 0.2 Wh per Kg; Water, raised 1000m - 2.7 Wh per Kg/L; Uranium 235 - 25 GWh per kg.

Energy companies largely just buy energy wholesale on the market and then charge customers for it, based on usage.

Pricing is based on the highest marginal price, so wind farms make your leccy bill 0% cheaper. But the operators will be creaming it in.