"Green" policies are destroying this country

That would because you don’t understand that all the money a private company spends- they have to make back from their customers and generate future ever increasing profits, by charging customers costly prices.

That is the crux of the problem with private companies owning energy generation- it’s a point you and other green zealots like you conveniently ignore.

Shareholders get paid from the profits made by profitable energy companies.

More profits= happy shareholders.

Is this not the case?

Isn't there an agreement made with renewables that they get paid regardless of using the energy, or is it they are paid even if the wind doesn't blow? Could be wrong there in my understanding. Perhaps you could educate me on it.

I was always under the impression that you were supposed to learn from historical mistakes rather than try to repeat them.

1973 OPEC held the world, us included, to ransom because we had all our eggs in the fossil fuel basket. Now just 50 years later we are handing the same over to private companies with a tail of the dog government party providing assistance. No development of any know fossil fuel sources being allowed, not even exploration to determine if there are any more, and attempts to block LNG.

I find the LNG one especially difficult to understand. We have posters on here opposed to LNG because of fracking, yet seem to be all in favour of using the same process for geothermal. I mentioned this to one in particular a few times but have yet to get an answer as to why there is this apparent great difference in the process for geothermal.

In the UK the playbook was to underbid on the "fixed" price but then wring the government (usually an NHS trust) for "contract variations" (e.g £80 to change a lightbulb). The contract detail my have been complex but the intention was as simple as ever.

So what it sounds like is that you haven’t read the papers and don’t actually know anything about it?

We do not have a good history when it comes to awarding contracts for state infrastructure not needing to be bailed out at the taxpayers expense. We continuously hit the "big hole" stage as in, get started, big a hole and dig it big enough so there is no alternative to finding the money to fill it in.

We have had it with Luas, The Port Tunnel, the HSE PPARS computer system, the motorway network, the national broadband plan, and now the Childrens Hospital late and heading towards €2 Bn with nobdy even able to give a gaurantee that will even cover it.

But you didn't find it strange when you were worried about how much Barryroe Offshore Energy were going to spend on an oil and gas field. In fact it was even stranger since BOE would have gone to the wall if they couldn't produce fuels profitably at prevailing market prices, whereas wind/solar companies are price setters.

Every person reading this depends on the availability and use of hydrocarbons for their existence today, electric power provided by solar panels and wind turbines is not viable technology to substitute energy and end products derived from hydrocarbons in the timelines set out under the concept of net zero. Hydrocarbons are heavily taxed, that is only possible due to productivity made possible by use of said products.

The price does serve as a rationing mechanism and when it gets too high, producers and consumers at the margins are the first to be cut off, even tax revenue falls leaving governments borrowing more, with interest payments that must be paid from the use of our labour to produce a product people want and can afford, we are fortunate to benefit from tax efficiency schemes (in effect renting the sitting room to MNCs and counting their income as ours).

People in Ireland are being put in a very precarious position by decisions taken by our government today, despite the insistent propaganda, warm weather is not one of those problems, the lack of energy and restrictions on production resulting from net zero policies and their implementation necessarily mean a negative economic impact. It is not possible to operate modern economy using unreliable low yield energy generation. The problem for Ireland, we are on the end of hydrocarbon supply lines, by the end of the decade, implementing the blind policies of the EU at the behest of another set of billionaires, we will be short energy and we will pay dearly.

For those idiots, who think heat is a threat, remember you live ~53° north of the equator on an island facing the Atlantic, with mean daily winter temperatures of 4 to 7C and typical Summer temperatures of 12 to 16C being an improvement. There is metric called excess Winter deaths, cold is a killer, every year. Consider for 2 weeks prior to Christmas 2022, wind and solar generation completely failed in this country, at the same time the all time record demand for electricity was set. We had access to coal and gas & oil generation, we were extremely lucky, no power outages, the weather system lifted and then remainder of the Winter was relatively mild across Western Europe. By the end of the decade, in Ireland we will have more limited access to hydrocarbons and can expect system failure and higher poverty as a consequence, simply because it is impossible to deliver cheap or reliable energy generation using wind and solar and whatever unicorn farts scheme they propose.

Demand will continue for hydrocarbons, anyone looking at global energy consumption charts and human population growth can see that and you can make the case that wind and solar electricity generation sources are a useful part of that energy mix, the fatal conceit is you can prevent exploration for hydrocarbons today and not bear any consequence tomorrow. There is a reason Western governments started looking for other sources after the 1970s oil shocks and set about breaking the power of the OPEC cartel. Germany built LNG storage, quickly and signed long term deals to supply natural gas. Ireland is at the end of the hydrocarbon supply line, we are dependent on continued Norwegian gas exploration via a single pipeline to maintain reliable electrical generation and home heating. Most production of diesel and petrol used on the Irish market is done in the UK, even there the oil majors have been pulling out and the number of refiners has fallen over decades. There is a developing supply problem and we now have to factor in how to deal with that. Low density, expensive and unreliable electrical generation is not the answer.

...its not enough! we ve known about this for decades! again, its not enough!

How so ?

Are you saying these contracts to renewable companies do not go through the rigourous examinations by Ryan that the likes of Barryroe went through, or is it like The Green Party last time they were in government, just believing what motor deisel engine manufacturers told them on the specs ?

I told you how "the big hole" scheme works, get going, dig a hole, make sure you make it big enough so that there is no alternative other than more money being found to fill it in. It`s scheme that is not just know by private companies but by governments and government parties who have an agenda.

We have seen multiple uses of it here by companies with state contracts. 15 companies with state contracts of €40 million and over for roads were bailed out by the taxpayer to the tune €270 million. You have only to look at the Childrens Hospital nowadays to see it in action. Private companies aren`t dumb. They will not engage in the practice when digging small holes. Not when the know there are going to be much bigger holes to be dug down the line where the real money will be. If I was a cynic then I would see green shoots of that emerging already with Ryan now granting renewable companies their wishes and gauranteeing them they will be paid for whatever they generate, whether we use it or not.

But, as I said it`s not just private companies who are aware of how the "big hole" scheme works. Governments or parties in government are well aware of it when it comes to an agenda they know if the final price to the taxpayer or the consummer was known they would be ran out of town. Something, again if I was a bit of a cynic, I would be looking at on this offshore plan and asking how come nobody can give a cost for it.

Now that is a real head-scratcher is it not, but perhaps you can give the answer to that one ?

Excellent, will you go ahead and tell the climate we've solved the problem, and it can stop looking for attention.

You're the guy who doesn't believe in icebergs as they're standing on the deck of a sinking Titanic

'You can't trust the studies that say icebergs can sink ships, there's not enough evidence, what's to say all those ships didn't sink for some other totally unrelated reason...."