"Green" policies are destroying this country

Offsetting fossil fuels has the same impact whether it's onshore or offshore wind, or solar PV or geothermal etc...

Those refineries are a nightmare for people who live near them

you're outnumbered in a 1 to 1 debate

Don't worry, by the morning your buddies will have flooded this thread with already disproven memes to make you feel better

I know we don’t sell gas to the UK.

Thanks for clarifying for that other poster that we have two not three pipelines that are collectively called Moffat and that they do follow roughly the same corridor.

Like a lot of your posts, you're simply making this up. Most wind farm land is leased, so capital costs do not include land purchases. The transmission lines etc. are effectively leased as well, as the generator pays Transmission Use of System Tariffs to Eirgrid. The wind farm operator also has to pay commercial rates. The costs at the end of the wind farm life (which may be as low as 20 years) depend on lots of factors. One poster on here keeps claiming that only rotor blades and some turbine components need to be replaced. That sort of approach is referred to as a lifetime extension (LTE) whereas wind farms eventually need "repowering", a more radical overhaul.

Like all load-bearing structures, wind turbine foundations and towers have a limited life. You can't just stick new equipment on top of them. More to the point, don't you guys keep claiming that costs are dropping and efficiencies are increasing? There is rarely an economic case for just refurbishing 30 year old equipment when you could be squeezing greater returns out of the same land area. Especially since these older farms already occupy the windiest sites. And yet currently 90% of European wind farms reaching 20 years of age get LTEs, not repowering, suggesting the costs and other barriers are very considerable (source). Newer bigger turbines may no longer meet the permitting conditions of the original farm etc.

Even the mouthpiece of Big Wind in Ireland only says that repowering is "potentially cheaper than new builds" (source):

(That repeat of "under the right circumstances" in the last sentence sounds a little nervous, doncha think?) But then, that's the same organisation that said just two years ago Irish onshore wind could be produced for less than €40/MWh (source). It claimed that at an average of €60/MWh to 2030, the provision of wind energy would be cost neutral, and that each €10/MWh reduction would save the Irish consumer an additional €1.5 billion annually. Here we are two years later and onshore wind is coming in at €97/MWh.

For those posters who continually banged on that "wind power is nine times cheaper than gas" (small print: on one project, in another country, during a one-day gas price spike on 26-Aug-2022) ... you presumably are taking note that the spot price for gas this week -- in the middle of an energy crisis, in winter -- is 30% cheaper than the last RESS auction for wind. Assuming those projects even get built, the costs to consumers are going to be horrendous as they are locked in until 2040.

How will replacing a MWh of gas produced electricity with a MWh of wind produced electricity not reduce carbon emissions?

How is the state subsidizing wind at the moment? When the gas price is high there isn’t any subsidy.

Forget about targets, what about money. Will the cost of buying emissions allowances for every MWh of energy we use not be very high? We could be looking at charges of €200+ per tonne by then.

one of the windmills off arklow got hit by lightning a couple of months ago and it burned for two day's completely destroying it. I was talking to a chap that works on the maintenance of them and asked him what will it cost to fix he said it won't be fixed only replaced along with the other 6 as their nearly 20 years old and wore out 63 more going out there soon to last what another 20 years? seems expensive electric to me.

There are three pipelines marked on the map!

Unlike all the countries you listed we have neither gas storage nor an arrangement with any other E.U. country on gas storage. Even if we had it would be on LNG storage which thanks to Ryan and his motley crew we do not have the facilities for either.

The E.U. this month capped gas prices, something Norway had warned against 3 months ago without any consideration for Norway when deciding that. If the U.K did cut Norwegian gas supplies to here what has the Four Freedoms of the single market got to do with that, The U.K. has not been a member of the EEA for the past two years ?

If you somehow believe that Norway would cut gas supplies to the U.K. based on the E.U. saying pretty please, especially after them capping gas prices then I`m afraid you would be sadly mistaken. If there was a trade war between Ireland and the U.K. the U.K. would not starve over night, whereas here those who are dependent on electricity for warmth and cooking would quickly freeze

The present lifetime of offshore wind turbines is 27 years. The present lifetime of nuclear plants now under construction is 60 years. We can all play the game of lets suppose either would operate indefinitely. You posted a figure recently on a wind + hydrogen strike price based on unshown back of an envelope calculation which actually showed that nuclear, not only being a fraction of the construction costs, would also be cheaper.