"Green" policies are destroying this country

Some stuff in there should have been done ages ago. Does read more of a wish-list than a plan given it mentions "complement the existing plan for a Metrolink".

This is magical thinking. There is no nuclear plant on the market which is (a) economical and (b) suitable for the scale of the Republic of Ireland grid. For this reason there is no chance that even one such plant can be delivered on 2032 (and we would need quite a number). It has nothing to do with politics or red tape as it happens.

This is all very well rehearsed. Hard to believe we are back to this.

Exactly, all Pie in the sky stuff from Govt./Eamon Ryan as usual..by the time any of this actually happens the cost will be €70 billion… and we'll all be long gone..

Was living close to the Quays during Covid. They should have built a proper continuous river-side bus lane rather than sticking in cycle lanes, but virtue signalling won the day.

A cycle lane for the sake of it is not exactly what anywhere needs, nevermind Dublin with its already narrow streets. There's not much point installing cycle lanes that aren't used. I've seen one in particular at Deansgrange where no bikes went past in 94 minutes before one solitary cyclist used it (around noon and not in the middle of the night). It's as if DLR didn't even measure traffic in advance of chucking it in.

I would add two additional things. First, the idea that the scale of Ireland's electricity demand is too small for nukes is just plain wrong. The nadir in our overnight demand is 3.5 GW. Add a million EVs (which isn't going to happen in my opinion, but it is the plan so let's treat it seriously for a moment). Average mileage of just 25 km/day, recharging mostly overnight in a ten hour window, is an extra load of 600 MW. Allow for modest demand growth (including data centres) and pretty soon you are at 5 GW minimum nighttime demand. That's not a couple of SMRs, it's a fleet of AP-1000 class reactors.

Second, our plan for grid expansion is falling apart as we watch. We have a chance of connecting new nuclear baseload at a handful of sites. We are showing no signs of being able to connect widely distributed wind and solar the length and breadth of the country and off our coasts.

With our self-inflicted dearth of natural gas infrastructure, and no sign that a renewable nirvana is feasible, we run a serious risk of being left with nothing.

From the latest Biz Post ESG briefing (replete with mandatory parroting of renewables vested interests):

ESG – Electricity grid problems mount

The issues surrounding Ireland’s electricity infrastructure are beginning to pile up.

In an interview with our markets correspondent Kathleen Gallagher, Alex O’Cinneide, founder and manager of Gore Street Energy fund, said it was critical that the government make some keys decisions about the prioritisation of grid connections and funding of Eirgrid.

As a specialist in energy storage projects like grid scale batteries, O’Cinneide warned that grid connections for their projects were taking a long time and were also unpredictable, making for awkward conversations with investors. The government would therefore have to examine how it can prioritise projects for connections, especially if it wants to hit its wider climate targets.

This comes as Ireland’s power shortage is also beginning to impact on our interconnector trade with the UK. As reported by our UK correspondent Dominic McGrath and myself this week, the UK was warned by an expert group last week that the “tightness” of power supply in the Irish system meant the flow of electricity from Ireland to Britain was less regular than might be expected, despite the potential for complementary wind and sun patterns.

In other words, Ireland doesn’t have the power to export to the UK, and in fact we imported a record amount of electricity from the UK last year, resulting in a somewhat false suppression of our emissions figures for 2023.

This all comes following news last week that data centres now account for 21 per cent of our electricity demand. Limits to grid capacity in Dublin will prevent new data centres securing grid connections in that region until a major replacement of wires across the capital is completed by the end of this decade. But in the meantime power demand from this industry will continue to grow apace anyway, due to existing data centres ramping up their power needs, and already contracted data centres connecting up to the grid.

A comprehensive approach to managing electricity demand and grid capacity from an energy security and climate perspective is clearly needed to manage these issues.

Have to agree with you on that point, it does seem that a lot of the cycle-lanes being constructed with road improvement projects are just put there "For the sake of it"…

The cycle lanes don't join up with other cycle lanes, they are full of leaves and mud/stones etc, they end abruptly, there's multiple junctions/cycle lane traffic signals/stops impeding progress, they're too narrow to accommodate slow and fast cyclists, there's often van's or lorries parked in them, the design means it's often quicker just to use the road and to avoid people walking in them..and most of all, there's not enough or no cycle lane network in Dublin at all..

Don’t forget the datacenters that now use more than homes and are critical to our economy to pay for all these Green elephant projects

So one project was delayed, lets stop everything else

Not sure many will agree with that attitude

Maybe have a look at this before complaining

https://www.dublincity.ie/residential/transportation/active-travel/about-active-travel/greater-dublin-area-cycling-network-plan#:~:text=In%20January%202023%2C%20the%20Greater,GDA%20Transport%20Strategy%202022%2D2042.

I picked out one example of how complicated it is to build a section of cycle lane… It's not an "attitude" it's a fact.. look at the link…

Linking to some plan "Strategy 2022-2042" so what is it you're trying to prove? That the cycle network will be complete in 18 years time… amazing, I'll stop "complaining" so for another 18 years 🙄

The first four paragraphs are very interesting. But none of them is really relevant.

There is no viable nuclear plant (both suitable and economic) for Ireland on the market.

This is more pie in the sky. Rolls Royce has not actually built an SMR. It won't have a demonstrator until 2030 at the earliest. There is no chance that they could deliver a unit onto the Irish grid in 2032.

There will be no way to know whether the RR SMR is economic to build and run until the mid-2030s at the earliest.

No one is excluding anything from the table. You are just proposing something that is totally unrealistic.

Finland has the same population as Ireland and consumes over twice the electricity. Last year their Olkiluoto 3 nuclear plant went on line, and as well as making them self sufficient in electricity for the first time is providing 14% of their needs. Over 30% of our current needs. Even being years late and over budget it cost €11Bn.

We have an offshore/hydrogen 2050 plan for 37 GW where the offshore capital costs alone are €200 Bn. that will still see us short by 4 GW of our projected demand by 2050, which rather than see us carbon neutral by 2050 will have us with the same emissions we have now.

As a poster here said some time ago. Pick your poison, it`s either fossil fuels or nuclear.

I have no illusions about the Irish Green Party whatsoever. They are magic money tree thinkers that are so inept they cannot even put a price on their own daft ideas when challenged.

They are either numerically illiterate or they know how daft their ideas are but refuse to admit it.

Any information to back this up? or just an opinion of your own?

In terms of fears of science and technology, wouldn't wind and most renewable energies fit into the category? electric cars?