"Green" policies are destroying this country

They may have gone higher without them. Are you seriously saying that taking renewables out of the mix will result in lower prices?

You sound like you think it goes without saying that electricity would be more expensive without renewables. What makes you think that?

Well they aren't. Why shouldn't they pay like motorists or transport operators?

Where's the competition? It's not a level playing field. Renewables are not allowed bid on the capacity market because they can't provide firm capacity. But they get priority dispatch, so they put the squeeze on other generators who have to run at lower utilisation.

From what I can see that only applied to new generation coming online after that date. Presumably there's still a bunch of pre-existing stuff that gets priority. I'll admit I'm not clear on what was finally implemented. However, good to know that the issue was being addressed. That said, I presume it only adds to the difficulties Big Wind faces (on top of cost of finance) once they are forced to be competitive, as evidenced by various project cancellations.

At the Biz Post ESG briefing someone is starting to wake up and smell the coffee about our abjectly failing virtue signalling approach to emissions. Though they still treat as "good news" last year's "reductions" due to unprecedented levels of interconnector imports — a mere accounting fiction. As mentioned, our first carbon budget ends next year. The word is that the follow-on budgets will commit us to 67% emissions reductions by 2040. Because when you've failed to do the impossible, obviously you aim for the even more impossible.

New energy data for 2024 shows targets slipping away

Good afternoon,

You wouldn’t have guessed it from the lack of climate action debated in the general election, but Ireland’s first statutory carbon budget will end next year.

That means whatever government is formed in the coming weeks, it will almost immediately be faced with the question of what additional actions it is going to take in 2025 to make up the yawning gap between where our emissions are, and where they need to be.

As revealed by a new report from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland today, early 2024 data actually suggests that heating related emissions will rise this year, transport emissions will stagnate again, and electricity emissions will fall by a much smaller percentage than last year’s whopping 22 per cent.

All of this doesn’t bode well for that first carbon budget, which is split into sectoral emissions ceilings across the different sectors of the economy.

But it's not all bad news, this year’s report also confirmed that Ireland’s energy related emissions in 2023 fell to their lowest point since 1990. This was driven primarily by that 22 per cent reduction in electricity emissions, due to record imports of power across the interconnector with Britain, and further increases in renewables. There was also a further marginal fall in heat related emissions, which solidified three years of reductions.

But as Jim Scheer, head of data and insights with the SEAI said: “Progress does not equate to success”, and now is the time to really focus minds.

The steepness of the challenge in the final year of the first carbon budget will require the incoming government to either announce a radical plan of action for additional measures in 2025, or an early concession that the first carbon budget is now out of reach.

Thanks for reading,
Daniel Murray
Policy Editor

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/11/green-party-ireland-general-election-2024

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yes ireland should be introducing nuclear, but we wont due to our extremely strong anti-nuclear stance, only a handful of us believe nuclear should be a part of our grid, and this may never change…..

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From the exit poll only 4% across all parties and independents gave their FPV based on climate change or the environment.