World's hottest day since records began

Agree with the pessimistic opinion, except that doing some of that might stop the tax payer, sorry, government, being killed by carbon fines.

Agree that carbon taxes hurt the poor the worst, the paradox of the boots comes to mind, but if it was worldwide and hit everyone we might see less private jet usage, less mega yachts etc. It would be crappy for the likes of Pawel and Angelika, and John and Mary, who moved to new places with the idea of cheap and easy travel back home potentially returning to bygone eras where flights are a luxury not an assumption.

But something has to be done.

Tourism, beef and being a tax haven are our three pillars of industry, if we kill the cows and stop the flights we better make sure we continue to allow big tech and big pharma to rest their monies in our accounts or that's all folks.

With the females that crossed with the seven males.

Would this count as a major subsidy towards fossil in Ireland?

So, let's add a few hundred million people to Ireland from, say, China or the US and problem solved? More people worldwide, more CO2? I'm glad Ireland has reduced its emissions in a year of Lockdown or recovering economy. But it means nothing, unless you're proposing global lockdown accompanied by massive reduction in consumption

There was a statement above saying something along the lines of little fossil fuel subsidy in Ireland

Something has to be done.

This is where the crux of the problem lies;

Some quarters want to reduce everyone's quality of life in order to achieve the 'something has to be done' by dictating what you can and cannot do.

Other quarters want to do the above a little more subtly by hitting you in the pocket so your hard earned cash can only go so far.

There are some who employ a bit of both to achieve it.

The voting public by and large despise both approaches and any combination of parts of both, hence the voting public are starting to shift to parties or independents who oppose the two strategies above.

The way forward is finding solid solutions that allow people to uphold their current lifestyle quality at current or lower costs. The first step to this is to develop low-cost energy that powers transport and electricity with very low or nil emissions. Nuclear energy hits the second requirement, but sadly tanks on the low-cost front. Renewable energy, especially wind it very unreliable - solar has some promise as we know when there is light and when there is dark, which is why I would support a large scale solar rooftop programme in Ireland capitalised by the government and paid back by the 'free' energy it would then produce.

The renewable power industry looks on with bitter envy at the fossil fuel industry and how they made billions over the decades and want the same for themselves in the coming decades. As ever, you and me the consumer will bend over and pay handsomely for energy going forward - you'll just be shafted by a different provider.

Nuclear is a lot cheaper than either solar or offshore wind if costed by the actual energy produced. A sleight of hand is currently used to cost renewables, called LCOE, which takes no account of capacity factor and is used to make them look cheap.

Nuclear is subsidized at every stage of its life cycle. Here's an example, how much is insurance for nuclear and who pays it ? Who pays decommissioning costs and waste storage costs ?

Wind and solar are subsidised massively. You don't think Solar in Ireland with a capacity factor of only 10.5% is commercially viable, do you?

You think renewables are massively subsidised in Germany, but not in Ireland? Can I sell you a bridge, slightly used?

If you install 1 GW of solar in this country, it will only produce 105 MW of power for a cost - based on US utility scale solar - of €800 million.

RESS = Renewable Energy Support Scheme

Couldn't actually be due to Ireland being a stupid place to install solar, at slightly less than half the capacity factor in Spain, for the same capital cost?

That strike price means a return on capital of 8.11%, which means it's 9 years roughly, just to break even. If you are borrowing money to build the thing, good luck to you.

Nuclear is expensive, right? Needs huge subsidies, according to you... The Barakah NPP in the UAE, just completed, cost €4.07 Billion per GW.

That's really expensive compared to €800 million per GW for solar, right?

Wrong, because the capacity factor for that NPP would be about 96.4% vs 10.5% for solar, so in terms of the amount of electricity actually produced, it's cheaper. This means that in a year you get about 8.4096 TWh vs Solar at 919.8 GWh. Using the same solar strike price, Your 'expensive' NPP is going to pay for itself in just 6.5 years and your return on capital is 15.31%, not 8.11%

You get so much more money back from Nuclear over it's 60 year life span - paid off in just 6.5 years, remember - it pays it's own way in terms of decommissioning and waste. Since states 'insure' nuclear, there is actually no cost, because there is no premium being paid, there is only a cost in the extremely unlikely event of a payout.

You just make sh​it up:

You want to see something with massive hidden costs, take a good look at offshore wind. There is endless media blagg about but how 'cheap' it is - never mentioning low capacity factors or the costs that entails elsewhere to compensate for, but the biggest hidden cost is maintainance - a whopping 1.2-1.4c per KWh generated.

We should not set up a renewables energy based system until storage solutions are available and in place. Without this we will need back up fossil fuel or nuclear. Storage solutions for renewables are years or decades off yet.

You just wont stop with the BS..

Slovenia and Croatia have a combined population of about 6 million. They share a nuclear reactor.

Slovakia has a population comparable to Ireland and has 4 nuclear reactors.

Current ESB estimates are for a massive surge in demand for electricity in Ireland due to electrification of transport and to replace fossil fuel home heating with heat pumps - which will require more power than EV's - and the production of hydrogen for fossil fuel replacement. Overcapacity, which it wouldn't be, would be absolutely necessary to generate power for EV's and heat pumps and also to run electrolysers to produce hydrogen.

Fun fact; electrolysers don't like being turned on and off and are a terrible match for intermittent power. They are a perfect match for nuclear power as it's a constant supply, green and cheap, which suits their technical requirements and which is most economical financially in terms of amortising their capital cost.

You don't understand how or why batteries are used in the grid, clearly. They are basically used as big slow cycle capacitors. A little something to tide you over while you rush to get the real power from somewhere else because your renewables just fell over because of their intermittancy and unreliability - as happened epically in South Australia, causing them to build the worlds largest battery (at the time).

You better get a grip on the reality of hydrogen, because the ESB masterplan for this country calls for gargantuan amounts of hydrogen energy storage:

Our projected storage needs running at a trillion Tesla Power walls equivalent is a consequence of Ireland's stupidity in not allowing the use of nuclear energy. 27 Hiroshima atomic bombs worth of stored hydrogen because of a fear of nuclear - there's some epic irony in there.

"Luckily, in the history of humanity, nothing bad has ever happened from lighting hydrogen." Matt Damon - The Martian.

That's €6,817 Trillion euros worth of batteries at Powerwall prices.

If you want to replace hydrocarbon fuels in transport, and batteries are expensive and very heavy, then you are going to have to suck up the inefficiencies inherent in hydrogen. Don't listen to me, take it from the ESB. Argue with them, not me.

Its caused by the cows farting. LOL Irish Government's plans to slaughter 200,000 cows at a cost of €600 million… under the guise of a #ClimateEmergency.