"Green" policies are destroying this country

I provided all the figures very clearly. I never said FiT is great, I said my TCO was done without FiT. If you did invest in solar you really should have done a proper TCO before buying.

The "oh look at them" has been done to death across the internet. Other countries are working towards Climate Change, some are not. That's not Ireland problem. We look after our own mess first

Nuclear is the future. Still only experimental but work is being done on scaling up. Good news even though not necessarily for Ireland since we have to stick with wind turbines and window salad boxes (after culling everything that farts and closing down most of the farms).

At least some progress other than waiting for wonder batteries and non existent (yet) technologies.

The problem with this is that the greens and their cronies in the wind lobbying industry won't be able to reconcile the greater good with their profits so will probably try to find some rationale to keep their intermittent technology in parallel.

Yep. All explained to you before. I've repeated myself several times, not doing it again. As I said last time, just go and reread the title of your own linked document: Energy Security in Ireland to 2030. Try to focus on this bit:

You don't seem to be able to comprehend that time doesn't end in 2030 in spite of me linking you to an extremely comprehensive 140-page document for the plans beyond that. It also baffles me how you think we're reaching net zero while still burning natural gas. However, nothing more I can do for you.

What was called conspiracy theory just a few months ago is becoming reality. According to this state will decide if you can use your heating or charge your electric car... It is starting in Germany but make no mistake it will be comming here too...

Thing is, this just amounts to throttling such devices when the grid is under substantial load. That doesn't mean your car isn't charging or heat pump isn't running, it's just simply at a reduced power level. And it's more a matter of the power infrastructure catching up.

You can buy multiple EVs that can comfortably do long journeys. A couple of years ago that was limited to Teslas. A Byd Seal for example can do a 510km on a charge. An Id3 starts at 330km but batteries go up to 550km. That kind of mileage is perfectly adequate for most drivers in Ireland tbh. Only point that needs improving is expanding of public charging points etc but equally most people's weekly journeys would easily be covered by home charging.

At the moment, the biggest determining factor on when more move is lower priced models which is 2025/2026 and a growing second hand market. Already the number of EVs on the road in Ireland has visibly increased in last year.

And the most likely time for people to be charging is at times where electricity usage is low is the night.

Maybe a few years ago it would be foolish to buy a second hand EV. But we know far more about the batteries now and capacity reductions in a year or two are pretty minimal. On average, they decline by 2.3% a year so a twelve month old Kona, cupra or id3/id4 can easily be picked up with low mileage. The long term approach is used batteries will likely be recycled.

In relation to weather, yep the cold can negatively impact however still Ireland has reasonably mild winters. Also there are options like heat pumps for plenty of EVs which counteracts much of this but even without, Ireland's climate is perfectly sufficient to get plenty of mileage out of an EV.

I'm aware of that, they're also not the only EV brand so plenty of options.

Trying to be condescending, good for you.

I 100% agree with you, yes you are baffled.

lets explain this

• Read the website, first paragraph “‘Energy Security in Ireland to 2030’ outlines national strategy to ensure energy security, while delivering on the commitment to carbon neutrality by 2050”

Carbon neutral, not net zero. Now do you understand the difference?

Now the document is from the government and sets out the plan to 2030 with a view to 2050 but rightly doesn’t lay out the plan to 2050 because the huge improvement in technology daily means setting Ireland on a course now with no way to change till 2050 would be wrong.

Could this include a grid with gas, of course it can if you provide a carbon neutral grid. Again we are not aiming for net zero.

Now I do expect some snotty response after you spend an hour on google and bang away.

To be honest, I don't think we should be going all nuclear just as much as we shouldn't be going all renewable. Wind and solar most certainly has a place.

Electrify heating and personal transport, and power that from your nuclear baseload:

• That load is relatively steady and very predictable hour-to-hour, day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year
• Crucially, it is a critical load - any variation and people are immediately and instantly impacted (localised power cuts, up to more widespread blackouts).
• If that starts becoming a regular thing, people will start to get very annoyed, very quickly. Businesses will suffer.

When the wind blows and sun shines, generate hydrogen from it:

• Use that to decarbonise your heavy industry such as trucking, aviation and shipping.
• Wind is pretty predictable insofar as they can forecast how much of it they'll have pretty accurately, including the near-zero periods.
• You can thus plan your production output around these variations to a high degree of accuracy, and a halt in production due to a lack of wind has no direct impact on anyone.

Result: You need next to no grid updates and you're now pretty close to having carbon free energy across the board that is extremely reliable and without any reliance on as-yet undeveloped technology or infrastructure (grid-scale hydrogen production and generation).

That would easily take us to 2050 to achieve but a pretty sure fire way to be net zero by then.

Once you have that in place, then start looking at what an all renewable grid looks like by 2100 which will be around the time these new nuclear plants will be coming to major overhaul stage:

• You're starting from a good place because you're net-zero anyway.
• Your grid is reliable and you've decarbonised everything.
• If you move towards an all renewable grid, and at any stage you have to revert back, no problem - you're still staying within the realms of net-zero and can take your time to figure it out.

Sadly, on our current trajectory, we face having to re-engineer the grid that is used to taking a relatively steady flow from our large power stations in the order of 1-2GW and deliver it relatively close to where its generated, to being able to take many multiples of GW, often from far-flung and extremely remote locations, hauling it halfway across the country and ramping from near-zero to many multiples of GW in the order of a few hours. No grid anywhere in the world today has been designed never mind deployed to do that.

We have no guarantee it'll even work for keeping a modern grid energised:

• no-one has produced anything even close to the required size of hydrolisis plants needed
• nor has anyone come close to demonstrate how the required treatment of the vast quantities of water needed to feed said plant can be done,
• nor proven the practicalities of storing TWh of hydrogen for weeks on end without leaking or eating its way out (or going up with an almighty bang),
• or how to run a power plant on hydrogen without producing massive quantities of NOx - the exact emission diesel is currently being slated for.

Yet we want to turn our country's electrical grid into one large guinea pig for the world to sit back and watch armed with a blank cheque and nothing more than crossed fingers it all works out in the end with absolutely no clear indication it will.

And if we get so far down the road only to realise it's a dead end, the only way back is to roll back on our emission reduction targets.

OK - so there's planning issues, likely objections, etc. Renewables, we are told, are already being held up by these objections and the proposal from many is to allow them effectively fast track (or override) traditional planning process. If you're going to do that, surely you allow "carbon free energy sources" as opposed to specifically just wind and solar, right?

The fear over electric is amusing. It's just a fuel. You should buy a car with a fuel that suits yo

few points, all cars no matter if electric or not are tested in the same conditions. So if you have a complaint about electric then you have a complaint about every car.

Every car, no matter what fuel in it will use more fuel in weather conditions. A petrol/diesel will use more fuel in cold windy weather as well. So the range drops.

The more you use any car it will get less economical. Standard with all types. If you have some facts on electric compared to other fuels I would be interested to read?

Not sure why a fool would only buy a second hand EV? maybe you can explain in more detail whey they would be a fool?

Exactly, I don't see the push to remove 1m combustion cars with 1m EV's, its nuts. They should be removing 1m cars and replacing with a proper public transport system

No political party in Ireland is proposing Nucclear. Do an opinion poll of people in Ireland asking if they will allow a nuclear plant in their county and see the results

Are all these people "brainwashed greens"?

They say gas is renewable too don't they? And burning biomass is green :-)