Shannon LNG terminal plans rejected by ABP

aigne

I just read through the ABP materials. Very weak justification, I wonder if it could be challenged legally. It all rests on this 2021 policy statement, the same policy statement that states in an early paragraph "The placing of a legal prohibition on the importation of fracked gas in national legislation has been considered and legal advice has been provided by the Attorney General. In the context of European Union Treaties and the laws governing the internal energy market, it is considered that a legal ban on the importation of fracked gas could not be put in place at this time." Applying an effective legal prohibition through the planning system seems like it could be challenged, and from my perspective is just a bad look too.

I was also surprised that the only mention of Glanbia case was in a submission by An Taisce, seems they were trying to mitigate the effects of that ruling. My own take on that ruling was planning is for planning basics, planning is not for implementing tangential policies.

aigne

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121127826#Comment_121127826

Sad how certain people think they are doing good but don't seem to have self-awareness to reflect on broader picture, and realise their good intentions may have harmful consequences. In some cases, like blocking new housing, or forcing higher energy bills on people trying to make a start, the good intentions is little more than pulling up the ladder

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121127757#Comment_121127757

Why do you talk of stranded assets when they would be privately owned? No skin off the taxpayers nose.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121127826#Comment_121127826

The main reason is; not doing things is cheap. It's actually the main reason for Irish neutrality and happlly letting the UK tax payer foot the bill when Russian planes and subs come around to threaten and hassle. Not helping out Ukraine much is cheap.

Irish cuteness at it's best. Eamon Ryan, on learning that the net zero via hydrogen plan is never going to work, has been calling for a stupid amount of interconnectors with France and the UK to provide the huge amount of backup you need when wind only has a capacity factor of 49% with the best of offshore wind farms, and a lot less for the majority of cheap onshore ones.

So let the French and British build nuclear reactors and burn gas and cop the CO2 numbers and just build interconnectors and then claim you have achieved net zero. Mind you, Irish consumers will probably then have the most expensive energy in Europe.

silverharp

I cant help thinking a nice 2 week high pressure (very cold, no wind) over Europe in Jan would be just the test to see how robust our grid is and other grids around Europe. We are run by too many people with expensive ideas.

antoinolachtnai

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121129411#Comment_121129411

We have plenty cover for this for this winter. Extra generation has been brought in to make absolutely sure. This has been discussed ad nauseam. It has absolutely nothing to do with building an LNG terminal that Western Europe doesn’t really need.

Topgear on Dave

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121129622#Comment_121129622

What fuels all that extra generation?

antoinolachtnai

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121129794#Comment_121129794

Nothing fuels it most likely, because most likely it won’t be called on at all.

Why do you ask?

Topgear on Dave

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121129823#Comment_121129823

All the extra generation you say that has been added. It's fuelled by something surely?

What fuels it? Don't be a smartass now.

silverharp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121129622#Comment_121129622

I assume someone commercial wants to do it so there must be a market. why tie one's hands behind one's back, the more options the better

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121112724#Comment_121112724

So there’s a catch. US firms don’t do anything for free. You want us to build something you better pay us etc. doesn’t matter if it’s a stadium or a port or a second Amazon HQ, these big corps don’t do a damn thing fully out of pocket

So if they’re offering to build you something for free, there’s indeed a catch what is it.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121130273#Comment_121130273

Yeah they planned to make money on selling energy back to the grid.

I think it’s fair to say any company investing millions in a country is expecting to make money on the back of it.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121130982#Comment_121130982

Well, yes, all the companies in the examples I mentioned, also made money, however, they were still built with major incentives from the taxpayer. eg. $3.4 Bn in tax breaks and grants for Amazon HQ2 (2019 money). That is not $3.4 Bn that Amazon had to spend. And the HQ is reportedly only worth $2.5 Bn! In today's money! It was a grift.

There's always a catch. And the guy who owns NFE worked for Blackrock and Lehman Bros and now owns an NBA team and more, he's played these games before with the Fiserv Forum, built with $250M of public money. There's a catch. And it would be foolhardy not to look for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wes_Edens

Pa ElGrande

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121129411#Comment_121129411

The function of supply in electricity markets is not to generate electricity but to provide a specified amount of electricity to a specific place at a particular time. This situation you outline happened before Christmas in December 2022, you may recall the 2 week period of cold we had, during which time the all Ireland record (7031 MW at 17:30 December 14, 2022) demand for electricity was reached, while at the same time unreliable generation from wind and solar disappeared from the grid right across the British isles and much of the North sea area. Dispatchable power was available at severe cost by having the heavy industrial users fall back to their diesel generators, bringing online CHP generation, inter-connectors (includes generation by nuclear & LNG fracked gas), coal and gas generation. Note: Batteries and Turlough hill are storage rather than generators, useful short term peaks in demand, these had to be recharged/renewed afterwards.

Natural gas is not just used for electricity generation, it's also used for home heating and industrial production and pressure (linepack) must be maintained in the network, the only storage buffer the country has is whatever can be packed into the Moffat pipeline.

By the end of the decade, Corrib gas is gone, investment in dispatchable power from Tarbert and Moneypoint has been cut. The original plan was shut both plants by 2025, they are switching to heavy crude instead. Moneypoint can hold 3 months supply of coal, aside from the Moffat line buffer there is no gas storage in Ireland. The cost of consuming these fuels will rise due to various government duties and carbon tax, forcing more of the Irish public to use single secondary power source for heating and transport: electricity. The plan using smart meters is also move people onto variable pricing plans that seem cheap when the wind is blowing, i.e. dry your hair when the wind is blowing, but for the 2 week scenario you outline, it will be turn everything off and light candles.

Ireland is not unique in this regard, Britain and other EU countries are pursuing the same electricity generation policy, but they have options, Ireland is at the end of the pipeline of inter-connector extension leads.

The nightmare scenario is under construction and will happen when we experience an extended 6 to 8 week cold spell that settles in over Northern Europe. This happens intervals of ~10 to ~20 years, think February-March 1947 or the 1962/63 Winter, 1982, Winter events in 2009, 2010 & March 2018 were the nearest we have experienced in recent years to extended cold episodes. This extended cold will run down gas supplies across the continent and when it lasts long enough will lead to a gas supply emergency. When the pressure cannot be maintained in the gas network, Gas Networks Ireland will activate the Natural Gas Emergency Plan (NGEP) (see section 9).

As energy consumers we are also caught between a rock and a hard place, all this guff you read in the paper about wind and solar being cheap is supplied by industry public relations and uses levelised cost of electricity (LCOE), they never quote full cost of electricity (FCOE), as we learned from those two weeks in December 2022, we needed to have a parallel generation system in place, because wind and solar vanished from the grid. This parallel grid has to be maintained, meaning the more unreliable generation we put on the grid the more electricity prices most rise.

antoinolachtnai

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121131536#Comment_121131536

Hard to see how it would lead to a gas crisis. There are 1000 TWh of gas in storage, a billion MWH, so 4 MWh for every home in the EU. And there are LNG tankers coming in too. This is a lot of gas. It would take a long time to run down all this supply. In addition there are also oil reserves that can be used to fuel the gas turbine fleet at a push.

You are scaremongering.

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121129834#Comment_121129834

I’m also interested to know what fuels this extra generation that may be needed.

@antoinolachtnai do you know perhaps? 🤔

antoinolachtnai

https://www.pleanala.ie/publicaccess/EIAR-NIS/313918/North%20Wall%20Emergency%20Power%20Generation%20Plant_Non%20Technical%20Summary.pdf#page8

https://www.pleanala.ie/anbordpleanala/media/abp/cases/reports/314/r314778.pdf?r=935174

Gas as it happens. But really it doesn’t make a lot of difference when it comes to emissions. These generators will not run very much. They might not run in anger at all.

plodder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121129207#Comment_121129207

I think there's a kind of projection going on there. One of the fears (stated publicly) is that the interconnector pipelines will be stranded assets - rather than any privately owned LNG terminals, which we don't care about. I suspect they're also worried that gas might actually get cheaper, which causes problems for the switch over to heat pumps. There's already a UK company selling a heat-pump that produces much hotter water and can act as a slot in replacement for many gas boilers, but it's not economical to run unless gas prices go up. Threatening our energy security is the wrong solution to that problem imo. They should be looking instead at specific usage incentives for heat pumps as well as the up-front grants.

By the way, the CEPA report is worth reading. It goes through a number of shock scenarios and is completely upfront that the reason why it doesn't recommend commercial LNG is because it's against government policy.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/09/14/octopus-end-era-ugly-heat-pumps-cosy-model/

Also:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/08/22/heat-pump-technology-soon-hot-even-britons-tempted/

antoinolachtnai

How is it projection? It is an extra cost for consumers that will have to recover. This is a very real fear.

‘They’ whoever they may be don’t need to jack up gas prices. Carbon pricing measures will do the hob of maintaining a differential between gas and renewables. In any case there is nobody claiming seriously that an LNG terminal will reduce gas prices.

Having or not having an LNG terminal does not make much practical difference to our energy security that I can see. If there is a global shortage of gas, the most likely scenario by far, it will not leave us in any better position.

Cordell

In any case, having a carbon tax for gas used to heat up your home is despicable. A warm home is not a luxury and what's the point of saving the planet (yeah, sure) if for that we need to revert back to living in caves? Any measures taken should be in the form of encouragement, not punishment.

rob316

What difference does it make to the environment buying fracked gas ourselves and buying it from the UK? Its absolutely ridiculous this isn't going ahead.

fly_agaric

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121134746#Comment_121134746

That would be an ecumenical matter...

...The gas is sanctified when it emerges here, same as the power from a French interconnector will be de-nucleared (!?) when it flows into Ireland!

It is a sacred mystery, like the Holy Trinity, transubstantiation etc

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121131820#Comment_121131820

But it does make a difference when we need to run these shiny new gas turbines and (for the scenario that has been mentioned on here plenty of times) we have no/a serious shortage of gas to run those turbines.

This is why gas storage is a necessity post 2030.

Mick Tator

Some of the misunderstanding here is amazing. The proposed Tarbert plant consists of several modules – from non-LNG (e.g. a battery storage facility), a shore base connector for wind farms  to onshore LNG storage and a connector to the ship that plugs into the latter. All the groundwork is done , the project has been ready to staryt for two years. A private company builds and operates the facility and sells/feeds gas into an existing pipeline. They already do this successfully in many countries around the world. If their gas price is too dear, it will not be bought. If the project is not successful, zero cost to the taxpayer, the ship will (literally) depart and sail to service the docking points elsewhere such as those already built in Europe - Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, Croatia, Poland, Greece and Lithuania and another 12 planned, several of which already are under construction.

Just 7% of the Irish electorate are bullying a government that wants to keep its collective snout in the trough and is terrified of the Shinners. Holy Ireland’s Greens have their heads in a very dark place and spineless govt. parties are prepared to accept their demands.

Shiploads of coal arrive with regularity to fuel Moneypoint, that will in a few years change to oil.

The gas we buy via the Scottish interconnector contains fracked gas (but E Ryan/Greens choses to ignore this).

France (according to Ryan supposedly our saviour) has serious issues already in supplying itself with power due to the state of its generation system. It is so far behind and overbudget with nuclear power generation that its government has had to step in and first bailout, then buy EDF.

E. Ryan refused point blank to meet the LNG promoters (NFE); he has not released a completed review / critical report on Ireland’s energy security and has sat on it for months. Why?

APB was wrong (what’s new, a body that has a history of corruption!) not to take that report into consideration before making a decision – ABP had sat on its hands for > 2 years so scurrying out now with a decision now is highly suspect.

It is no secret that various Green Parties in Europe have been funded by and are tainted by Russia (e.g. German Green Alliance leader Schroder was appointed to the board of Gazprom. His Green Alliance government forced several German nuclear plants to close decades ahead of schedule. Similarly Belgian Green politicos forced the early closure of several reactors in that country (Doel & Tihange). Am I alone in thinking that it was because Putin wanted to corner the market for Russian gas?

As for Ryan’s notions of wind energy, the environment also is visual – I do not want a rows of Pigeon House size windmills in Killiney Bay or in Sally Gap or Killarney. The idea of floating windmills off the SW coast is farcical. Put Ryan on his cronies on a boat off Kerry in a gale and let them see how feasible their D4 notions are of survival in an Atlantic winter gale.

I love the environment; I want my children and grandchildren to have a better world but I also want them to have jobs and Ireland to have an economy. I do not accept what Ryan and co. are spouting. Saying ‘Wind is the solution’ is like saying in 1845 ‘Shur the potato crop is grand, it feeds the country’.

My hope is that he and his cronies will be consigned to the compost heap at the next election.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121137232#Comment_121137232

Thats a lot of rambling for one post, maybe split it up in future.

I'll respond to one point

Just 7% of the Irish electorate are bullying a government that wants to keep its collective snout in the trough and is terrified of the Shinners. Holy Ireland’s Greens have their heads in a very dark place and spineless govt. parties are prepared to accept their demands.

As has been shown over and over and over again, across multiple surveys by numerous agencies, groups and survey companies, support for climate action is typically over 80-90% among the Irish electorate

https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/2ccf0-climate-conversations-2022-report/

https://www.epa.ie/our-services/monitoring--assessment/climate-change/climate-opinion-maps/

https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/2954

Mick Tator

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121137349#Comment_121137349

No argument that there is massive support for action on climate change, but considerably more than 70% of the people do not want to be in the dark because our system is not fit for purpose. We are very far off targets in alternative supply.

Cordell

support for climate action is typically over 80-90% among the Irish electorate

Yeah, being worried about it and supporting government to do something about it is one thing, really supporting it is a totally different thing:

And I can't help to notice that no one asks the most important question: would you support climate action even if that would mean significant higher expenses, including much more expensive food and energy and pretty much everything?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121137445#Comment_121137445

 but considerably more than 70% of the people do not want to be in the dark because our system is not fit for purpose.

Is there some evidence we're going to "be in the dark" or........

Mick Tator

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121137608#Comment_121137608

Yes if you look with open, unblinkered eyes E Ryan even alluded to it in his NY interview - it's there, hidden in his usual waffle The upcoming long-delayed review also will confirm it, it's been obvious for an age - except to those who believe the Greens

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121138568#Comment_121138568

Go on, throw up a link and an excerpt there so we can judge