"Green" policies are destroying this country

Why is this COP thing turning into some grift for compensation by certain countries? What a farce (even more farcical than it already was anyway).

More link spamming. Give it a rest please.

It would drive you up the wall,impossible to have any sort of discussion without being bombarded here

Rare earths for wind turbines and EVs are creating environmental hellholes with illicit production being outsourced from China to even more devastated places ...

In the same vein, two new papers show how the Green agenda involves crapping all over the world's poorest:

• "Global environmental cost of using rare earth elements in green energy technologies", (Golroudbary et al., Aug 2022)

Wind turbines and EVs use 6-9 times more minerals than their fossil fuel counterparts. Extraction of rare earth elements incurs a high CO2 cost that is generally overlooked. Green technologies will cause the demand for REs to expand up to 700% in the next 20 years.

• "Equity Assessment of Global Mitigation Pathways in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report", Kanitkar et al., Nov 2022 in preprint)

The main shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) underpinning AR6 are based on assumptions that the world's poor will stay poor. Basic human needs such as health care and education are strongly linked to GDP which in turn is strongly linked to emissions. Allocation of the remaining carbon budget to meet climate targets is heavily skewed toward the current balance of world income. While projected GDP growth in developing nations is higher than rich countries as a percentage, in absolute terms they fall even further behind developed economies:

Even more stark is per capita consumption of goods and services:

It may be that this paper is just preparatory to getting out the annual begging bowl at COP27. It has some harsh words: "the IPCC AR6 scenarios disregard both the historical responsibility of the global North for carbon emissions as well as the future energy needs of the global South required to meet developmental goals". Its conclusion could also be disputed: "Scenario construction should effectively be the imagination of possible futures, and an equitable world must be central to this imagination. Our analysis clearly underlines the need for new frameworks for emissions modelling, scenario building, and constructing ideas of a future that makes the planet “liveable” for all and not just some sections of the global population". To my mind, scenario construction in anything that purports to be "science" should be based on what's likely to happen since that is what we are preparing for, not some imagined utopia.

However, they also have a point. We have to assume that developing economies, given half a chance, will choose to dramatically increase energy usage to give them some of the same opportunities as the rich world. To me, that means the niggardly Green approach of trying to reduce emissions by limiting economic growth is evil. We need low carbon solutions that will deliver gobsmacking levels of new energy. We also need to keep the economy alive while we transition to there. (To me that realistically also means embracing a future of 2-3 degrees of warming, but that's a separate conversation).

The mouthpieces for vested Big Wind interests never miss a trick, and there doesn't seem to be a shortage of journos happy to copy and paste their press releases ...

Here we have Big Wind claiming credit for the drop in wholesale electricity prices in October. Uh, it couldn't possibly be anything to do with the price of gas falling off a cliff?

And while Big Wind is claiming credit for the lowest prices since August '21, they forget to mention that wholesale prices are still three to five times their pre-21 values (source: SEMOpx Power Exchange, monthly report):

You will notice that the spikes in electricity in the last year correlate exactly with the spikes in gas prices from the previous chart. And, in fact, the correlation with gas prices is maintained all the way across the last five years:

So we can take Big Wind's claims with a large pinch of salt. Basically, electricity is expensive when gas is expensive. It is cheap when gas is cheap. The only thing wind energy does is place a floor on how low the price can go because they are guaranteed priority dispatch under EU legislation at a minimum of whatever strike price has been agreed.

And why has the cost of gas fallen? Because the EU efforts to finish filling gas storage from LNG have been wildly successful (no thanks to Ireland or Eamon Ryan). Which is not to say we are out of the woods by any means, just that we can't take any more gas until we start ramping up winter consumption and drawing down storage. Even with this glut, forward gas prices in Europe are still the highest on the planet, so LNG tankers are sitting it out off European coasts waiting for opportunities to unload at the right price. It's worth paying the charter price for a vessel to sit idle in order to be able to snap up the European prices when demand allows.

We can thank our lucky stars for LNG technology which has matured at just the right time. Ten years ago we wouldn't have had this option and Ukraine would have been thrown to the wolves.

Solar in Ireland has a capacity factor of 11%, onshore wind is ~25%. (offshore maybe ~35%) The reason gas peaker plants and coal are needed are due to unreliable energy generation being unable to deliver energy on demand (See wind going offline during peak demand on October 23) . Even before the current energy crisis consumers in all countries that increase random energy generation on the grid bore the highest costs. Lets see a costed plan for energy generation utopia from the Greens and the lobbyists pushing for that, until then we need gas and coal for many decades to come.

That would be amazing, ban them all, but what about all the people who drive to work every day from the surrounding counties?

I heard some counsellor or TD on the radio saying pedestrianising streets in Dublin was an attack on "ruardle Ireland" because they have no choice but to drive to Dublin having decided to live in the middle of nowhere. I'm not sure banning cars would get much traction.

If you read that post then you might finally have worked out how the marginal pricing policy works and at least think twice before link dumping Big Wind propaganda claims that they were responsible for the drop in the wholesale electricity price when they had absolutely nothing to do with it.

What you term as "it seems like a good idea" is what many here have been calling for since the start of this thread. Scrap the marginal pricing policy and let Big Wind and other renewable stand on their own feet on a level playing field, but at E.U. level there has been nothing on that other than foot dragging, so who do you think is doing that foot dragging. Gas companies where it would make no difference to the price they are receiving, or Big Wind in particular who are receiving the same price per unit as gas ?

We have been listening to that BS for years. The landbank in Tarbert was purchase about 50 years ago and there have been various developments trotted out by every successive government since and not one single sod has been turned for any project. More politicians looking for a photo op.

Correction. Contrary to my last post you didn`t learn anything.

Under the marginal pricing system the wholesale electricity price of solar will be the same as that of gas. I presume those GW`s of solar working their way through the system are those from the latest strike price which is the same strike price as U.K. nuclear.?

You would probably be wise to be careful on what you wish for with coal.

Last year the share of renewables for electricity generation fell from 42% to 35% because of the intermittent and undependable nature of renewables. Gas share also fell from 46% to 43% due to maintenance work and Ryan`s foot-dragging and ineptitude on providing cover for that. The share for both coal and oil tripled with coal providing 14% and and oil 7.5%.

Had our coal plants, (or indeed oil), been shut last year then we would have been in serious trouble with supply, and with Ryan showing he could not even manage having cover for a 3% drop in the gas share, I have little confidence in him being able to do anything to compensate for his idea of shutting Tarbert next year and Moneypoint in 2025 without him landing us in the complete mess we would have been in last year without coal and oil plugging the gap.