"Green" policies are destroying this country

I'm fully aware that the majority of cars are owned outright. Not sure why you can't accept that all of those cars will need to be replaced at some stage.

Not sure why you seem to think that EVs are so much more expensive and can only drive 50km.

Or your assertions that people shouldn't upgrade their houses, did you workout the payback for replacing your bedpan and outhouse before you splashed out on a inside toilet. Whats the return on investment on a new kitchen or couch?

Or do these only apply to EVs but no other spending? It's just a car, if you don't want one don't get one.

Looks like Denmark is sick of relying on renewables and wind turbines to bring down their electricity costs (the Danes are only a small bit cheaper than Ireland and Germany) and have now voted to go nuclear.

High time this patsy country of ours grew up and followed their lead. For a left-wing government, those Danes are doing alot of the right things.

Remembering that we cant even build a single children's hospital, would love to see how a nuclear power plant would go.

Tax payers taken for a ride and more than likely no change in the cost of electricity.

We have over 40% from renewables and the second highest electricity prices in the world and we have an offshore wind plan plus hydrogen where the strike price for just the wind element would be higher than that of Hinkley nuclear plant, the most expensive plant those opposed to nuclear can find.

Difficult to see that we are not being taken for a ride at present.

Worth noting that the most expensive country for electricity world wide is Germany. The E.U. driving force behind renewables, who in an energy crisis due to their love of Putin`s gas, shut down their remaining nuclear plants. Even Greta Thunberg couldn`t get her head around the reasoning behind that.

Ludicrous.

In the same week that we are learning of a collapse in attendance of kids going to school, we have Simon Harris out there shilling for this garbage instead.

Germany getting into bed with Russians and predictably getting burned badly is hardly the fault of solar or wind is it.

We've had our own issues of wood chips from Brazil. The real issue is energy companies being given free reign to gouge consumers. That's only bring checked by increased competition between companies. While most just play musical chairs with the tariffs. Theres one or two with plans you can make savings with.

A better option for Ireland is to buy some supply from another countries nuclear. That's a lot less risky and it's balanced with our renewables.

Well that is dumb. I guess probably minimum viability of a contract or such.

The issue is the way we pay. If we want the cheapest rate we need to limit the number of different fuel sources we use, be they renewable or otherwise. If we only used Wind, solar, nuclear and gas we would likely only be paying the gas price.

If we throw coal oil and LNG into the mix and they each provided just 1kWh to the grid. If one of those goes up in price we pay that new price to the wind, solar, nuclear and gas providers also. So under our system it's better to have a narrow supply than a diverse one

What could make our system better? If wind and solar were cheaper than gas we pay the wind and solar the cheaper rate, not the gas rate

What else could we do? Re-nationalise the electricity supplier, take all generation and sales into the hands of a semi-state just like we had pre-privatisation. Remove the need for profit and our costs will come down very fast

2 solutions to the problem but maybe they are too simple?

I would suggest this relationship between Germany and Russia for GAS predates the Greens and was mostly for commercial reasons perhaps even appeasement. It was a terrible idea.

https://academic.oup.com/book/45845/chapter/400764617

Getting shot of the marginal pricing policy, if renewables are as cheap as these companies claim, would reduce the price but E.U greens have been fighting tooth and nail not to have that happen. And I don`t see renewable companies lobbying to change it either.

If you owned one of these renewable companies would you when knowing that under it you can get first shot at as much of the projected demand as you can supply without having to quote a price, and then get paid for the most expensive non-renewable in the mix ? If anything it`s a policy for renewable companies to strive to keep fossil fuels in the generation mix.

The other problem with wholesale prices, is the 15 year state gauranteed strike prices for renewables that nobody other than the consumer will be on the hook for. Should the wholesale price drop below the strike price then these companies are topped up tothe strike price. If the wholesale price is greater than the strike price they pay back the difference. I`ll leave it up to your good self as to which is the most common.

An example of how it would work here. We have a proposed policy here of 37GW of offshore wind with a 50/50 split between generation for the consumer and hydrogen production. Orsted re-negotiated a cfd price with the U.K. for the Hornsea 2.4GW wind farm @ €100 per MWh last September. An Increase of 60-70% of what the U.K. were offering it at a year previously and could not get a single bid. This month they walked away from honouring that contract as it was economically unviable. But lets just suspend reality for a minute and say somehow we woul get that strike price of €100 per MWh for this proposed 37GW offshore. Irish consumer would be paying a strike price of €200 per MWh (€100 for consumption generation and €100 for hydrogen production) and paying it - thanks to Eamon Ryan`s guarantee - for every MHh they generated even if we did not need or want it. But even at that we would not be have the final strike price of this proposed 37GW plan. The strike price for hydrogen plus other bitsand pieces would still need to be added.

The current U.K. cfd for hydrogen is €11.24 per Kg. That works out at €340 per MWh, so without even the other bits and pieces add-ons, (hydrogen storage, distribution network etc.) this proposed plan would have the Irish consumer on the hook for 15 years at a minimum strike price of €540 per MWh. On that strike price there is zero chance of them paying anything back due to wholsale prices being higher than the strike price.

Re-nationalising is increasing looking like a serious conversation as a nation we need to have because the current proposals would only lead to our economy being wiped out imo.

Here's hoping because at the moment I need to switch suppliers to get the cheapest deal. That's despite the electrons I use coming from the same power plant and using the same cables. Re-nationalising would cut a lot of that sh1t€ out of the annual search for a start

Can't see nationalisation happening unless theres another crash or deep recession that puts the supply at risk.

Yeh cant see it either

They are half a century being anti-nuclear. Shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. It's really the risk of nuclear that has been the issue in the wider population in Germany looking at the history of it. I guess when you've been carpet bombed you might be a little more cautious about such things.

I like the solid fuel stoves but I dislike being the neighbour of one. Windows closed, washing in.