"Green" policies are destroying this country

What is the purpose of fuel duty? Just another smash and grab or in reality a carbon tax in old money

The Daily Mail, as usual, are blaming 'green energy' for the pollution caused by traditional industry. (From their own article)

It's also worth noting that most of the Cobalt currently mined, is not used to produce Batteries for electric cars, some of it is used for processing fossil fuels for example. It's also important to say that the next generation of lithium Ion batteries do not use any cobalt, and that this technology is advancing rapidly, mostly because of the opportunities to make money as people are being pushed to develop electric car technology rather than just rely on old polluting ICE vehicles.

An unnamed 'government rep' not being able to answer a specific technical question on the fly in a live interview does not mean that the government are making taxation policy without considering the impacts.

If he didnt know the answer so be it. However he did know it was inconsequential. Not sure how he'd know the latter without knowing the former. Maybe just a simple misunderstanding

Tiny percentage? Nearly every house in rural ireland runs a back boiler from a stove. I was in a DIY store in Co.Longford this week and they were EXPANDING their solid fuel stove section in the shop, such is the demand. One would wonder how accurate statistics are in this regard.

You should see the tonnage of turf being purchased across the western seaboard this time of year. Why? Because it boils down to cost. With electricity prices doubled in most homes and kerosene prices rocketing, stove sales are increasing and by extension, the demand for turf and solid fuel. Go take a look out in the yards of every Co-op in the country and count the pallets of kiln-dried wood for sale.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the Green policies, they are drastically out of touch with reality. At the end of the day, putting food on the table and heating a home for your family comes first, and people outside the m50 bubble couldn't care less about being green when it becomes a real struggle , due to enormous costs, to provide both of those basic needs.

With The green parties' push to force people to live in towns and cities, their ignorance of life outside these areas, and their dire neglect of rural communities, one thing is absolutely certain. There will be no green party members anywhere near government at the next election.

I lived in a house for years with an open fire and a back burner. The back burner barely warmed the radiators. I know several people who installed stoves in the past few years, none of them had them connected to the central heating, they used oil or gas to heat their radiators.

A tiny percentage of the population live in rural areas so your point is ?

Its a bit mean to call them luddites, but since 1990, very few houses use coal or turf for central heating.

That's an indication that those houses who still do so, do it because the owners haven't upgraded their heating systems, rather than they just happened upon a better heating system before Oil Gas and Electric heating became the norm.

Semantics. I pay fuel duty for using fossil fuel in my car. No difference in paying carbon taxes on the same fuel. No interest in the politicians telling me its for a good cause. For the record it doesnt pay for supplying my water not that it matters. I alao pay a shite load of income tax and vat etc and Ive no knowlwdge as to how thats spent either

I'm not disagreeing with you on this matter, this project is specifically for freight and the minister seems to be aware that freight transport on our island is not really a runner, passenger rail transport is a tremendous method if the critical mass is available, if we are to see future work habits being primarily from the home, and certainly the value of investing in commercial property and for that matter car parks is questionable at best it brings into question the cost benefit of rail transport.

This is pure handwaving. We've already had problems getting people to bid for thermal generation where they would only get to generate for a few percent of the time. But you think people are going to build vastly more expensive BESS to do the same job? Not going to happen. All it will do is push up the price of electricity to extraordinary levels or, more likely, result in a completely unreliable grid. You're extrapolating from an intraday load smoothing service where investment capital is automatically available because there is serious money to be made, to longer term storage where the market conditions don't favour even the cheaper fossil fuel options that are available today.

You are not talking about million of tonnes, you are talking about billions or even trillions. And these things don't last forever. Eventually you are talking about a steady state replacement rate that is completely infeasible. Not to mention that the energy minerals needed to create them don't exist in the required quantities. The moment you do even back-of-a-fag-packet estimates on this stuff is the moment you realise it's never going to happen. And then you have Greens completely mystified as to why their utopia isn't taking shape and emissions are continuing to rise -- it's because they are either innumerate or have their heads stuck firmly in the sand. We need vast amounts of new, reliable, low-carbon, baseload power. I wonder is there any technology available today that fits the bill?