"Green" policies are destroying this country

Ok, this really has to be my last post to you on this subject. From now you either just get referred back to this post (where I will pull all the relevant links together), or you simply get ignored.

TLDR:

• you've been banging on about the wrong government document from the beginning;
• when you look at the right documents there is no natural gas in the mix.

Details:

You have posted so many dozens of posts at this stage accusing people of not reading "the government document" that we are in danger of forgetting that you were talking about the wrong document from the very beginning. It's utter cringe reading your admonitions about how there will continue to be natural gas in our energy generation mix, when you literally were reading the wrong document. You continued in post after post to refer to "the document" without reposting a link, suggesting you either never knew what you were talking about, or you were deliberately trying to cover your tracks after you realised your mistake. (As far as I know you never posted any link to a document, you just picked up on one from another [now banned] poster).

However, there is no doubt which document you were talking about as you quote verbatim from it here:

Your quote from "the government document" is the summary section of "Energy Security in Ireland to 2030", available here:

This is a document that Eamon Ryan was effectively harangued into producing because so many people were aghast at his apparent plan to have no indigenous natural gas, no LNG imports, no gas storage, and inadequate plans to replace our aging thermal plant with new gas-fired generation. His energy security document talking about "new gas-fired generation as flexible backup" should be read as Ryan with a gun to his head.

I pointed out to you many, many times that "Energy Security in Ireland to 2030" is not the government's climate action plan. The latest version of that is a document first published in December 2022 called "Climate Action Plan 2023, CAP23" and available here:

CAP23 is most explicit about plans to 2030 but goes well beyond them. It is abundantly clear that our "flexible gas-fired generation" in 2030 has no part of the plans for 2050. I mean, really, how could they? When I asked you that question you started splitting hairs between net zero and carbon neutrality, without actually answering the question. The fact of the matter is that we are committed to both carbon neutrality and net zero by 2050. (cf. CAP23, 2nd paragraph of the Foreward and 1st paragraph of the Executive Summary respectively). Carbon sinks from land use changes and peatland rewetting cannot offset continued natural gas usage, and there is nothing whatsoever in the plans to suggest so.

So what actually is in the plan? Up to 2030 it includes 2GW of additional "flexible gas generation" capacity. That's where time appears to stop for you. However, beyond 2030 we need "increased zero emission gas generation to enable a net zero power system" (c.f. CAP23, Table 12.5). Then, as part of the 3rd carbon budget (2031-35) we are expected to need:

• A policy to require future dispatchable generation to be zero carbon gas ready
• Policies to ensure that zero carbon gases, like hydrogen, are utilised in the electricity sector to provide zero carbon dispatchable electricity at sufficient scale;
• Policies to support the development of inter seasonal storage of hydrogen;

(cf CAP23, section 12.3.4).

The specifics of the plan are obviously not provided, as they are largely hopium. This is where three additional documents come into play, all of which I have posted previously. The first two might have been before your time. They are:

• Eirgrid's "Shaping Our Electricity Future Roadmap Version 1.1"
• DECC's "National Hydrogen Strategy"

I provide links to them here:

The more important one was the one I posted here:

Unfortunately Eirgrid have managed to break their own website, but you can still get at the report here: "Tomorrow’s Energy Scenarios 2023 Consultation Report". As I said in my post, none of the four scenarios provided include any natural gas in the mix, except for the least favoured one where all other options fail and we are forced to go with carbon capture.

In summary:

• yes, we plan to use "flexible gas generation" including 2GW of new capacity to 2030.
• beyond 2030 natural gas generation will be phased out in favour of hydrogen and/or energy imports.

Now, I have no doubt that you are just going to ignore this post like you ignored all the previous ones, and go back to talking about "the government document". The only response you will get from here on is a link to this post. On the other hand, your latest tactic may indicate a whole new claim that you were only ever talking about the plan to 2030:

But that doesn't square with you bringing up net zero, which is not remotely in the plan for 2030.

I totally get where you are going with this and it's not the maddest I've ever heard. Basically, let renewables do their best to generate hydrogen on a competitive basis. Don't bother with all the expense of connecting them to the grid as their sole function will be hydrogen generation. I get it.

But it has a considerable flaw, possibly a fatal one. If you look at Irish or UK plans for hydrogen (I've posted links to both previously) both of them acknowledge the problem that you are trying to bootstrap a hydrogen economy from zero. You have to deal with the fact that grey hydrogen is vastly cheaper. Then you have to create an entire new hydrogen-based transport infrastructure plus whatever other bits of the economy you are planning to decarbonise with hydrogen. It's an absolutely massive undertaking. Everybody accepts that any new enterprise will be loss-making for a very long time. You cannot attract private capital unless you are offering upfront subsidies and the guarantee of a future market. (In fact, it's very similar to problems I've acknowledged for nuclear ... except worse).

Given that you have to decide up front that you are in hydrogen for the long haul, it really isn't just a matter of "suck it and see". You can't try it and abandon it without massive sunk costs.

Just a little reminder from COP28 that developing countries are not fooled by green platitudes. They know that the default route to first world riches is the same route that the first world countries took themselves. Mandating economically infeasible renewable solutions is NOT going to work. We either come up with something better and cheaper through technical innovation, or accept that decarbonisation ain't happening.

This sums up the whole charade perfectly.

After 27 years of shows bleating about renewables and how they were going to solve the worlds problems, the fossil fuel nations said okay - let's host this and bring your toys and plans to the show.

The lesson for the greens here is don't bring a knife to a gun fight.

While we are culling cattle to "save the planet" Mercusor countries are being rewarded with a trade deal allowing them to export 99,000 Tonnes of beef (roughly 160,000 cattle) to the E.U. for their less than sterling efforts.

If there was only any one single reason why the Irish Green Party should be voted out and never let anywhere near government again, their culling of cattle would take some beating.

From the article

As always, take studies like this one and their findings with a grain of salt, since this is only one source for this information and it therefore can't be confirmed.

You linked the article which itself seems to suggest the information is nonsense.

Why would I want to "Lash up a link"? I was the person who asked for confirmation that electric cars go on fire more than combustion,

I'm still for seeing can it work, I don't believe a nuclear exclusive grid provides us any more energy security than fossil fuels currently do, for example.

I don't believe, either, that an all-renewable grid is technically or economically feasible and to even come close to trying would require you to have a blank cheque which the Irish consumer most certainly does not have.

But we most certainly do need to get away from burning things to produce energy and BEV power for long-haul trucking, shipping, aviation and rail is simply not practical due to weight, bulk and the relatively long downtime required for "refuelling".

So - if renewables can truly produce energy in the quantity we'd require to meet all of our energy needs on this island and in a manner that is cost effective, let's see it happen on a relatively large scale first.

Let's not go and start re-engineering our grid, trying to transport and store TWh worth of hydrogen in bulk most likely to be burnt in a gas turbine (hello, NOx), and pumping hundreds of millions worth of concrete and copper into some of the most extreme locations on the planet.

BOC off the Long Mile currently fuel the hydrogen fuel cell Dublin Bus vehicles here - ~8 minutes to refuel for 300KM-400KM of service.

While BMW are trialling a fuel cell X5 in the UK with reports of ~500KM of range on the back of a refuelling time of 3-4 minutes.

Iarnrod Eireann are currently looking to re-engine a 1970's two-stroke diesel locomotive, albeit it'll nr combustion based rather than fuel cell, but as I understand it will still produce less pollutants overall once converted than it's current diesel engine does so still a win.

So the means to get the hydrogen into the vehicles has been shown to be possible, fuelling related downtime is identical to that of petrol and diesel, but can we produce the hydrogen and transport it at the scale needed? Again, before we pump all of the millions into rolling out massive grid upgrades to drop in high speed chargers at key arterial route hubs that will see, at most, 3 cars with a full charge per hour with no hope of it getting through even a single truck, rollout hydrogen hubs as well.

Ultimately, if it isn't going to work for transport, it absolutely will not work as the means of backing our electricity grid. Until we try, we won't know, and until we know we'll still have those insisting their pure, all-renewable grid, and everything-electrified idea is the only way forward.

Because it is cheaper than cracking methane when the input from the wind turbines is very cheap as they'll be using surplus electricity. Also, governments will regulate 'blue' and 'Grey' hydrogen out of the market as soon as green hydrogen production is mature enough to take over.

Up to now, the electricity grid is based on demand. The marginal cost of electricity is high because you have to pay for the fuel and man power to run the electricity generators, and you also have the high fixed costs of the plant and machinery that is incorporated into every unit of electricity.

Electricity is generated on demand, and when demand is low, generators are shut off and all that expensive plant and machinery and all the infrastructure is sitting there doing nothing because we have very limited energy storage

The future renewable based grid is based on Supply. The marginal cost of the electricity generated is very very low, and instead the price of the energy is based on utilising the fixed assets as much of the time as we can. This decouples demand from supply, and it means we generate surplus energy when there is a lot of renewables, and then this energy is stored and used when it is needed, and the price of this works out as the average cost of the on demand energy, and the costs of storing and re-releasing the energy when there is a supply shortage

Most of the time, there will be enough or greater supply than there is demand, so there will be periods where energy is very cheap, and at the times when there is a deficit of supply, energy will get very expensive. This creates economic opportunities to store cheap energy, and sell it when it is expensive. Domestic users with modern smart meters, will store cheap energy in domestic batteries and in vehicles (and many will generate their own energy with rooftop solar)

Commercial and industrial users will store energy because it will make commercial sense to do so, and all of this along with grid scale storage, and long term storage through strategic reserves and Ammonia storage, will result in a stable, healthy energy economy that doesn't rely on any fossil fuels and emits close to zero carbon pollution from the generation and transportation of energy.