"Green" policies are destroying this country

Very few farmers will be building and owning these. Aren't they something like €15m to get one up. Where farms come into play here is supplying it with feed. And they would want guaranteed pricing and index linked in the same way solar/battery companies are leasing land.

I've been approached by a planned AD plant about 15 miles away to supply grass to it. The T&Cs were in no way in my favour. Prices were to be negotiated no later than March 17th each year, and priced on a yearly basis. I'd have to guarantee a certain tonnage, I'd have to guarantee the quality of the product, and I'd have to deliver it to the plant. There were penalties all round for any non compliance. When I did the sums it was more beneficial to me by roughly 28% to bale silage and sell it to local farmers and I'd have none of the T&Cs that were being imposed.

Pristine untouched nature?

Or overexploited bogs?

More the latter, there is no pristine untouched nature in Ireland. We destroyed our forests for profit, we destroyed our bogs for profit, we poison our lakes for farm profit. So why not wind energy?

I don't see any of the current profit from the countryside, plenty of people who live abroad already own large swathes of it.

I know the fines that Ireland faces for missing its 2030 emissions targets were discussed on this thread a couple of pages ago. The Biz Post ESG briefing has covered it this week:

Would you like to pay now, or put it on your tab?

Good afternoon,

We hear a lot about the costs of climate change, from the impacts of crop failures on economies, to the expense of clean-ups following extreme weather events, to the impending loss of high-value coastal property.

But there is another significant cost now facing Ireland and other EU countries by the end of this decade: fines.

As I reported this week, Ireland will face EU fines of “at least” €8.2 billion after 2030 if it stays on its current trajectory and misses climate targets, according to the chair of the Climate Change Advisory Council (CCAC).

Marie Donnelly told the Business Post that while the Department of Public Expenditure had previously done an assessment showing a range of €3 billion to €8 billion in Irish EU compliance costs, the council was preparing a paper demonstrating €8.2 billion as the “baseline” cost

While the government has its own target of reducing emissions across the economy by 51 per cent by 2030 on 2018 levels, the Environmental Protection Agency recently found that even if all the measures are implemented emissions will only fall by 29 per cent.

The CCAC’s analysis is that we are not on track to meet these targets, and as a result we are facing climate fines of at least €8 billion.

That’s not small change, and it would surely be better to spend that money now in an effort to reach our targets.

But between legacy infrastructure problems, planning bottlenecks, and a wider political backlash against climate action, it’s not clear that the political will exists to frontload that investment, despite having to pick up the bill at a later date.

Thanks for reading,
Daniel Murray
Policy Editor

I've been thinking about the lunacy of signing up to targets that any thoughtful person might have predicted we'd never achieve. Why? Because we've been yakking on about it for years without any real progress. Here's a lengthy 2019 article from Carbon Brief. We were already deep in a hole back then:

I guess 2030 seemed a long time away and politicians felt climate action was a vote-getter. Maybe someone more knowledgable than me can explain how the €8 billion in fines is arrived at. My possibly incorrect understanding is that these aren't actually fines. They are an obligation on us to buy carbon credits from compliant countries to make up for our own carbon overruns.

The problem is, these may not even be available to buy. Europe's dirty little secret is that we are only one of a dozen countries likely to miss their 2030 targets, with seven more at risk:

And one of the biggest offenders is Germany who could be on the hook for €16 billion. At that rate they would have to hoover up 70% of the EU's allocated carbon credits. Italy is similarly in trouble. There may not be any credits left to buy.

Surely at some point we have to accept that targets have been unrealistic from the start. What's to be gained by further impoverishing each other?

Germany, so countries who doubled down on wind and this week busy blowing up perfectly functional nuclear plants

Incredible that they spent 1.5 trillion (soon to be 2) on failed Energiewende policies and still produce 6x CO2 of France next door day after day

Deleted

To quote my own post, I'm now declaring this is dodgy as ****. To get the grant you have to be up and running by December 2025, with planning permission received in the next 3 weeks

They aren't serious about this stuff at all. It's all great plans, great intentions. Then announce unworkable schemes, or plans for schemes down the line. None of which will make impacts now when required.

Well, they may have stronger sense of self preservation when it come to the future.

Our politicians don't realize that when grid goes down, pitchforks come up.

More than €10m worth of generator engines meant to tackle the State’s electricity supply shortage have been stranded in Dublin Port for over a year as they are too heavy to transport on the M50 toll bridge.

The machines were shipped to Ireland last summer by German manufacturer MAN Energy Solutions to be brought to two industrial estates in Dublin.

However, after the 11 engines arrived in Dublin Port, it was discovered they were too hefty for transport across the M50, weighing in at 275pc more than the design load for the West-Link toll bridge. source

That's not all, MAN energy solutions is closing their gas turbine division, how about maintenance and spare parts?

So when 37 GW of offshore wind fails to materialise this will be the goto excuse?

All Eirgrid can do is provide advice on what generation is needed, and issue offers for grid connections and deliver some offshore connections. Esb have similar responsibilities for grid connections but can build generators in one arm of their business. Neither have control over 3rd party failures to deliver generation.

If you want that, then talk to the minister about reintegration into one vertical company who does planning, development and operations all in one. Maximum efficiency but no competition.

They will just build it elsewhere (see apple Athenry datacenter fiasco that greens led)

With net result to the planet being the same while Ireland loses out on investment, good jobs and steady taxes

But that’s what we get for letting a bunch of greenwashed Luddites run the asylum

Ah your looking at it in a logical way. This is not the way the greens have being teaching you. In much the same way as burning wood is sustainable, or importing power from abroad has zero emissions, Google building their site elsewhere is good news for the climate.

France that has the foresight to invest in nuclear power instead of going Don Quixote at windmills like we are