€26bn in Climate Fines - why can't Ireland start All Ireland Rail plan, cycle lanes, paths etc NOW?

Sure we don't even have a rail from Dublin airport to the city, tells you everything. Only country in EU i believe with main airport.

Too many cush jobs in the public sector it's unreal. It's impossible to be fired compared to other countries where you actually have to hit targets.

Geuze

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123251437#Comment_123251437

Prague airport doesn't have a rail link, but your point is well made.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123251447#Comment_123251447

Didnt realize about Prague, I work in IT and theres IT managers in public sector who don't know what an ip address is trying to lead projects, no repurcussions

Geuze

Jaysus, I don't work in ICT, and even I have some idea of what an IP address is!

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123251466#Comment_123251466

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123251466#Comment_123251466

CFDs are supposed to protect suppliers to make investment attractive

Exactly, and Ireland costs far more to put together any kind of infrastructure project and it's reflected in the pricing. At 65€ per MWh projects wouldn't be viable in this country. Our cost base is simply too high, and nobody will ever tolerate wages decreasing so we are stuck essentially.

It's still cheaper than oil and gas though! And less risk of supply disruptions in an ever increasingly fragmented world.

We need better rail systems and public transport and cycling paths. Any faith in our government to do this probably not. You'll laugh but cows farting is the main culprit. Feeding them seaweed sees emissions dropping by 80%

gjim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123251466#Comment_123251466

I think you've missed my main point. Ireland is an expensive country for everything. If renewables are cheaper than the alternatives according to all international studies, then even if there is an "Ireland" premium on constructing generation capacity in this country, they will still be cheaper in Ireland than the alternatives, no?

Also you need to be careful comparing headline prices per MWh - it depends on the structure of the contract: duration (years), index-linked or not, the basis year for prices (in the UK it is 2000 I think?) and whether they are two-way.

Without seeing the exact structure of the Romanian contracts, Irish CFD structures are modeling on those of the UK which are two-way and have involved substantial payments FROM the producers in 2022 for example. Two-way CFDs reduce volatility for the supplier but also have a cost as it means the producers cannot benefit from high wholesale electricity prices.

In any case, renewables have become so cheap that there are 3 off-shore wind projects in planning at the moment which have bypassed the ORESS system completely and will compete without a CFD.

It's not "green politics" which has driven the replacement of legacy generation tech with renewables, it's cold hard economics/finance.

cgcsb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123251437#Comment_123251437

Budapest, Prague, Riga, Ljibliana, Nicosia, Valletta and Dublin are the EU capitals without airport rail links. Luxembourg recently completed theirs. Of this list though Dublin is by far the biggest airprot

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123251494#Comment_123251494

There is no evidence for that guff on the Irish power market(or any other one that has gone down the route of stuffing wind energy on the grid, see my link in the post below concerning the situation in Germany). One of the main reasons Ireland is now so expensive to do business in, is because of these idiotic wind developer led energy policies

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123251541#Comment_123251541

Cheap for who?? That waffle is about as credible as Trump and his statements on the Price of Eggs🙄 Meanwhile back in the real world

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/more-german-companies-mull-relocation-due-high-energy-prices-survey-2024-08-01/

KrisW1001

A reminder again that the largest cause of Germany’s industrial energy problems was Vladimir Putin. If you want a lesson in why we cannot continue burning fossil-fuels, then Germany is your example.

The price of gas in 2020 made wind look “expensive”, but you’d be an idiot to have assumed that, of all things, fossil-fuel prices were stable and would never spike. I mean, it’s only happened every decade or so since oil and gas displaced coal, and always for reasons that have nothing to do with demand.

So, it’s wind that’s a gamble?

@Birdnuts - who told you wind energy is the reason Ireland is so expensive to do business in? Out of control property costs that push up wages and service overhead costs, planning delays for plant construction, inadequate city transportation, plus difficulties in finding accommodation for foreign staff relocating. Those are the factors cited by real, rather than imaginary, companies that have considered locating or expanding in Ireland. None of them have anything to do with energy policy.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123253517#Comment_123253517

Yes. The linked article cited “high energy costs” as a reason why German industry was considering a move, and it was presented as a “reason” why wind energy was bad. I know energy is not electricity, and that was the point I was making: a complaint about industrial energy costs is not, and cannot be, a complaint about wind energy, because industrial energy is so dependent on directly burning gas.

I agree with you that much of German industry needs gas as there’s no cheaper way of delivering, and more importantly, storing, the necessary energy on site. Germany itself also hasn’t got a lot of wind resource to begin with, so whatever happens it will continue to be an energy importer. Also agreed that successive German governments chose to believe Putin because the alternative would have meant spending money on infrastructure: honestly, the idea of letting the private sector take full ownership of critical infrastructure hasn’t worked out well either. As you live there, I don’t need to mention more than the word “trains”.

But it’s not the “green” movement that should worry those industrial users for whom there’s no alternative to gas: a shift of electricity generation away from gas will cause the price of gas to fall, not rise, due to reduced overall demand. The prospect of global reduced demand for fossil fuels has Russia and the likes of the Gulf states **** themselves: their rulers’ reliance on resource export to balance the books has left them all with economies that produce nothing of value - if people stop wanting gas and oil, the party is over. (Even in diversified economies, there are local risks: just consider why the state of Texas suddenly decided to court the tech industry, when for decades it was doing just fine with fossil energy as its primary industry)

We’re not Germany, though. Our problems are not about industrial dependence on gas, but that we didn’t do enough to decarbonise our transportation and agriculture (the two largest sectors contributing to our emissions). There are good solutions for agriculture, but they cost a lot, and buy-in will be hard when so many farmers cannot make a living from it as it is. On transportation, we’re not doing enough. Only 2% of our rail network is electrified here, versus 61% in Germany (itself considered to be behind its peers). Line electrification results in lower CO2 than burning diesel, even without changing any of our generation sources.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123253783#Comment_123253783

It’s not so simplistic. Ireland has a major road traffic congestion problem. Passenger car commuting carries 1.2 persons per vehicle on average, at an average speed of around 20 km/h at peak times. That's a lot of wasted road space and wasted energy, and much of it is along corridors that have an underused rail line beside them.

Every time you get one car driver to take a train, you free up road space for the people who couldn’t ever make that switch. Traffic moving more freely uses less CO2 per trip (peak ICE efficiency is around 80 km/h, and diesels in particular are really bad at low speed), so a significant mode switch onto rail also reduces car emissions.

Mainline rail emissions are not a significant factor, except that the outer suburban services run on those main lines: what matters is that the commuter rail corridors around Dublin are not used efficiently at present. Diesel trains in particular are poorly suited to commuter services: they take too long to accelerate, lowering the average throughput of the line: when you mix diesel with electric trains on the same lines, as is presently done on the coastal line, you get terrible utilisation.

That’s what Dublin’s commuter rail looks like now. Electrification improves line capacity, brings more commuters onto rail. Overall transport emissions improve, motor traffic congestion lessens. Nobody loses except those who have convinced themselves that making things better is actually a bad thing. These are hardly “pet projects”. Demand is there for better commuter rail: ask anyone crammed into existing trains, it’s not some kind of conspiracy.

Metro has similar effects in reducing congestion and emissions. The 1950s are gone, nobody’s flattening neighbourhoods for collector-distributor roads, so underground rail, cycle and bus are the only possible solution for increasing mobility within the city.

Why do you not think electric rail transport is a good idea?

gjim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123252553#Comment_123252553

"Cheap for who?"

The Chinese, the Texans, everyone in the world who is in a position to make a decision on investment in the electricity sector, whether in centrally planned regimes or in libertarian environments and everything in between. 85% of investment in new generation goes into renewables globally.

GerardKeating

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058399103/26bn-in-climate-fines-why-cant-ireland-start-all-ireland-rail-plan-cycle-lanes-paths-etc-now

but once we pay the €26bn in fines, we won't have the funds to invest in Cycle lanes & any rail plans.

cgcsb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123260189#Comment_123260189

The fines won't happen, whatever about Ireland, countries like Greece where they don't even have domestic recycling are so far behind they'd never meet such targets and don't have the means to pay any fines. The Netherlands is burning coal for electricity. Germany and it's intellectually challenged policy makers switched from nuclear back to coal over the past few years. They won't be paying a fine for their Merkel brain fart.

Then of course you have Ireland which is simply incompetently governed so you get things like government getting people to remove insulation from their house or remove car charging stations that they have permission for or to remove bike shed they have in their own front garden. The capital city doesn't even have a traffic enforcement policy

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123260248#Comment_123260248

Then of course you have Ireland which is simply incompetently governed so you get things like government getting people to remove insulation from their house

This isn't a thing. If you're talking about the recent case in Dublin, the homeowner requires planning/retention because he modified the appearance of his house substantially and didn't put it through planning or anything.

His attempts at retention were not refused but deemed invalid because he couldn't even get the basics right. His drawings were hand drawn scribbles on paper, not to scale and not even with all measurements or views shown.

He is a thicko basically who can't even do a simple planning application or pay for someone to do one and instead went to media to cry about it.

cgcsb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123260505#Comment_123260505

The point is that the state even requires people to obtain such permission and then insists on removal of insulation

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123260563#Comment_123260563

Except it doesn't - if you get insulation fitted that matches the original design of the house like you're meant to, you don't need to do anything

This lad changed the design of the house, listened to a salesman telling him it'd be OK, then put in two jokeshop retention applications and went crying to the papers. And journalism is so much in the ditch here now that all sob stories get printed.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123260505#Comment_123260505

The council takes a lot of the blame here, as their planning rules are in working in direct contravention of government policy. If homeowners are encouraged, and subsidised, to externally insulate their house, then doing this should be exempted from planning permission in almost every case. The only exception to this is probably Listed buildings, but this ordinary semi-detached house was not, in any way, a listed building.

The contractors who did the work say this is the first case they’ve ever heard of a modern house being ordered to remove insulation, and the couple’s neighbours have had similar work done without requesting planning permission. It seems like someone in SDCC has a bee in their bonnet about external insulation, or (more likely) that the planning inspector made a stupid decision, and rather than admit it was a stupid decision, they’re digging their heels in.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123260600#Comment_123260600

Can be exempted development if it "constituted works which do not materially affect the external appearance of the structure so as to render the appearance inconsistent with the character of the structure or of neighbouring structures”.

This guy did not keep it consistent the bottom of house was brick facade, then it was changed. He 100% would have gotten planning or retention if he could put together a coherent application but both his applications for retention didn't pass the low bar of being deemed valid for consideration.

The council have nowhere to go here, I highly doubt they want to remove this guys external insulation there is no benefit to them in doing so, but they cannot allow people to flout planning rules as it's quite literally their job to enforce them.

If govt policy contravenes actual legislation then that's govts problem not the council. Council follow planning and development act, they cannot pick and choose parts of the act to ignore because Govt wants us to externally insulate our homes.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123260658#Comment_123260658

The council has complete leeway here. The planning rules ask them to make a value judgement, and they can just as easily rule that it does not materially affect those things.

The big clue that it’s the council’s fault here is that there are other houses in the area that have had the exact same work done, and yet have not been issued with a notice to remove. Now, either those premises asked for, and got, planning; or they didn’t request planning but the council is fine with their houses looking different. Either way, the couple in question have been subjected to an arbitrary and inconsistent process.

The other issue is that there should be a remedial action possible here. The issue appears to be that they’ve covered the brickwork along the ground-floor facade with a solid-colour render Well, removing the top-coat render from the lower half and replacing with brick-effect render or lightweight brick slips would make the house visually consistent with its neighbours. That, rather than a removal order, is the answer.

I don’t see any version of the situation where the council is being reasonable here.

hans aus dtschl

We're a bit off-topic, but the council should send someone to quietly help him to fill out his forms, and put all this drama to bed.