"Green" policies are destroying this country

FF & FG are going to get wiped out in the next election, by their failure to stand up to the Greens.

We may well have a SF majority government which may reverse some of the Greens' stupidity, but SF are likely to cripple the country by some of the other stuff they say they will do.

It's hard to be optimistic about this country for the next few years.

Irish politicians have a balancing act to maintain between the interests of the golden goose (i.e MNC tax receipts) with the EUs stakeholders against the interests of the people who elect them. Fundamentally we have problem caused by the EUs one size fits all policies, as a direct consequence have made property expensive to buy or rent. In addition the EU dictates energy policy to its member states and it is the local politicians job to enforce those policies. Even Sinn Féin are not going to choke the golden goose, all their talk is "eat the rich", they are not going to pick a fight with the EU, their main task on getting power is getting the Irish establishment under their control. Read their 2020 election manifesto, they are fully onboard with green policies.

Green policies must first be abandoned or sidelined in Germany. Once there is no enforcement from Brussels, only then will Irish politics change. Alternatively, if there is no benefit to having the MNCs domiciled here, then the cost benefit analysis of continued EU membership also changes.

You should pay attention to the DUARTE case in front of the European Court of Human Rights. If this case succeeds, it won't matter who we elect, they will be bound to act based on the courts ruling.

They'll already be impoverished well before then due to our reliance on Gas.

Or alternatively we can generate our own power and build better interconnectors with friendly nations instead of being blackmailed by despots to our south and east

It was designed to speed up the transition away from fossil fuels. It's working but then Vlad decided to throw a spanner in the works. Possibly because he knew his window of opportunity to leverage the gas pipeline was starting to close

The fossil fuel industry know that renewables are their biggest threat.

By far. That is why they're spreading so much disinformation about renewables

Do you think an SF-led government would be likely to do that?

The projections are worthless and the paper does not escape criticism and has since been superseded (last paragraph) . Osman et al. 2021: a flawed Nature paleoclimate paper? They discuss the differences between the preprint and what appeared in Nature.

For those of you interested this presentation is an excellent description and documentation of the multiple physical processes that interact to warm and cool the earth from the end of the Cretaceous to present day (44 minutes(. Including what and how these processes are affecting our climate today, and what we can look forward to in the future. None of the presentation relies on theoretic climate models!

Solar power is so cheap now, I think every open air car park wil have solar farms over them within 10 years.

Every single car park can be generating electricity and selling to the grid, and also charging cars with solar generated power at every parking bay

No, it means they are an industry lobby group. They accept the world view they are paid to accept.

It was designed exactly the way I said and for the purpose I said.

Putin had nothing to do with there being zero reductions on electricity bills prior to the end of February this year when we were one of the most expensive in the E.U. for electricity with one of the highest percentages of renewables. And would not have no matter what the percentage of renewables were under the marginal pricing policy. All the policy has done is enrich renewable energy providers.

How you have gotten the idea in your head that Putin somehow invaded Ukraine because he believed he would sell more gas I have no idea other than it`s nonsensical.

To be honest, the naivety of comments like this scares me. Are Green enthusiasts capable of joining dots or doing the most basic back-of-an-envelope calculation? You might as well be talking about Jetsons-style flying cars.

Based on the number of parking spaces in the country and the size of a standard car space, there are about 475 hectares of car spots in the country. Using data on existing Irish solar farms, you can generate about one megawatt of power per three hectares. Car parks are obviously bigger than just their parking spaces. But that's before you consider that the vast majority of car parking spaces are in urban centres, or even underground. It shouldn't need pointing out that there isn't a lot of sunshine there.

The generating potential of carparks is therefore probably a few tens of megawatts at best. Then consider that we are not talking about laying a flat roof of solar panels, but arrays that need to be tilted at a 30 degree angle as well as aerially mounted. And you need a grid connection for every far flung car park in the country with a few dozen parking spaces. How can anybody think this would be economically sensible?

If solar with its low power density has a future in this country, it will be in utility scale projects. Even at that it will struggle. As we've seen, when payments to generators aren't index linked (as they were under the REFIT scheme), and are capped at the strike price (subject to "difference payments" under RESS 2 compared to RESS 1), the price suddenly goes up 30% at the drop of a hat.

I would be surprised if we don't see very significant price increases under the next auction round and even some of the successful RESS 2 applicants abandoning their projects in the face of construction cost inflation. You simply can't subsidise energy at this level without the chickens eventually coming home to roost, and the consequent inflation creeping into every corner of the economy.

And of course we're still ignoring the 600 lb gorilla in the room -- the fact that a high level of renewables penetration is predicated on grid-scale storage which is never coming, and treating interconnectors as extension leads to other countries that have hopefully made more sensible energy policy decisions (i.e fracking in the UK and nuclear in France).

I presume Eamon Ryan is banking on the notion that by the time it becomes apparent his policies have led to a permanent 100%-300% increase in the cost of energy, he'll be able to argue that we are too far down the road to change course. The man is a dangerous nutter leading us to ruin.