They'd be better off with (and are building out) offshore and onshore wind. If you've ever been to the west coast of Ireland you'll know they've got almost unlimited wind energy. The country is targeting 5GW of capacity by 2030 and 37GW in the distant future[1].
If only they could harness the power of rain, Ireland would truly be an energy superpower.
> If only they could harness the power of rain, Ireland would truly be an energy superpower.
I know this is in jest, but that's basically "dam up some valley rivers and put a hydroelectric generator on the end", and unfortunately Ireland isn't so good for that. (It's not just the physical geology, it's also all the people living in the places you'd flood).
Hydro as a battery is easier and works in far more locations, but that's not harnessing the power *of rain*.
But yes, Ireland and the UK have an absolutely huge wind power resource available around them, IIRC enough to supply all of Europe if the grid connections were there to export it all.
There has been a lot of proposals to dam up massive unpopulated sea-facing valleys in Mayo and Donegal and use pumped hydro with seawater. Was a bit topic 15 years ago, but never happened. All that happened was the silvermines pump hydro plant that seems behind schedule.
Ireland briefly had the biggest hydroelectric dam in the world until the Hoover dam was built… but that was before electricity production really took off. Ireland doesn’t really have the geography for dams, the hills and rivers are far too small.
Onshore wind in England was de-facto but not de-jure banned by the Tories in 2018, due to a footnote inserted in their National Planning Policy Framework. Labour removed this footnote in 2024, immediately after winning the election. [0]
Offshore wind was never affected, nor onshore wind in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.
Well, Tories would argue that you can't get the really big turbines onshore that you can offshore, so it doesn't really matter. Tiddly little turbines don't generate that much, and why spend lots of money on the planning process and fighting NIMBYs when you can generate it offshore?
However, it does matter, when looked at in whole with the need for capacity in the National Grid. A pile of turbines across SE England would have really helped, because a lot of the offshore wind and Scottish wind power has to be dumped, and gas generators fired up instead, due to lack of grid capacity to distribute that power across the country.
We should, of course, have completed upgrades to the grid by now, but they're late.
The 'sell electricity to Ireland' bit here is doing an awful lot of work. It's more complicated than that.
For those who don't know, Ireland operates an all-island grid, and EirGrid (the grid operator for the Republic) owns SONI (the grid operator for Northern Ireland). That means that 'UK' and 'Ireland' in this has a large Northern Ireland shaped lump of ambiguity that statement.
It shouldn't be that complicated. The UK sells electricity to Ireland (and vice-versa?) in the same way that Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway sell electricity to the UK, and vice-versa.
Don't tell me EirGrid's EWIC that comes onshore at Dublin and Greenlink at County Wexford are an "NI-shaped lump". They are sources of electricity for the whole island, when it's needed, just like the UK's interconnects with the continent.
Tories during 2015-2023 made construction of new onshore wind farms all but impossible (removed subsidies and made planning permissions very difficult). I would assume Labor could reverse these polices but haven't seen anything in news about this.
In 2000, coal was about 20% of the energy mix, gas another 20%, oil about 50%. Wind was 0%. In 2024 coal was about 2%, gas still 20%, oil still 50%, but wind grew to about 15%. It seems that wind actually replaced coal. It is not only logical, but good, that wind first replaced coal (dirtiest), and maybe from now on is will start to replace oil. Only after many decades, or maybe never, gas will be replaced.
Primary energy compared to electricity as energy. The first adds energy used in driving, chemical industry etc. the second is just the amount of electricity generated.
Still, in the second figure of your link, you can see how gas is more or less stable since the start in 2005, and coal + peat is being slowly replaced almost 1:1 by renewables, mainly wind as hydro is stable and solar is marginal in Ireland.
crude oil and petroleum products (37.7%)
natural gas (20.4%)
renewable energy (19.5%)
solid fuels (10.6%)
nuclear energy (11.8%)
(2023 numbers)
So natural gas was just barely more than renewables in 2023, but according to the source below the line was crossed in 2025 and renewables now provide more than all fossil fuels put together:
For those following along at home, it appears enir is (edit: as well as using EU wide data, not Irish data..) including non-electricity generation, or non-grid, energy use. Grid stats available here https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/electr...
Ireland has essentially no working oil power generation capacity these days (I think the only ones are a couple of small diesel units on islands, which are not even connected to the national grid). Moneypoint was replaced with some combo of wind, gas and imports.
(Moneypoint was actually built originally due to Ireland's over dependence at the time on oil for power generation; after the oil crisis, initially ESB attempted to build a nuclear plant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnsore_Point#Cancelled_nucle...), but it was such a political minefield that it was canceled, leading to Moneypoint.)
They'd be better off with (and are building out) offshore and onshore wind. If you've ever been to the west coast of Ireland you'll know they've got almost unlimited wind energy. The country is targeting 5GW of capacity by 2030 and 37GW in the distant future[1].
If only they could harness the power of rain, Ireland would truly be an energy superpower.
[1] https://www.irishtimes.com/special-reports/2025/10/30/winds-...
> If only they could harness the power of rain, Ireland would truly be an energy superpower.
I know this is in jest, but that's basically "dam up some valley rivers and put a hydroelectric generator on the end", and unfortunately Ireland isn't so good for that. (It's not just the physical geology, it's also all the people living in the places you'd flood).
Hydro as a battery is easier and works in far more locations, but that's not harnessing the power *of rain*.
But yes, Ireland and the UK have an absolutely huge wind power resource available around them, IIRC enough to supply all of Europe if the grid connections were there to export it all.
There has been a lot of proposals to dam up massive unpopulated sea-facing valleys in Mayo and Donegal and use pumped hydro with seawater. Was a bit topic 15 years ago, but never happened. All that happened was the silvermines pump hydro plant that seems behind schedule.
Prof Igor Shvets was behind this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_Ireland
Ireland briefly had the biggest hydroelectric dam in the world until the Hoover dam was built… but that was before electricity production really took off. Ireland doesn’t really have the geography for dams, the hills and rivers are far too small.
Are they selling to UK that AFAIU stopped building wind 10 years ago. Regulatory advantage...
You're mistaken.
Onshore wind in England was de-facto but not de-jure banned by the Tories in 2018, due to a footnote inserted in their National Planning Policy Framework. Labour removed this footnote in 2024, immediately after winning the election. [0]
Offshore wind was never affected, nor onshore wind in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.
[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/policy-statement-...
Thanks, I was quite mistaken indeed! I wonder how much onshore England then affected the big picture.
Well, Tories would argue that you can't get the really big turbines onshore that you can offshore, so it doesn't really matter. Tiddly little turbines don't generate that much, and why spend lots of money on the planning process and fighting NIMBYs when you can generate it offshore?
However, it does matter, when looked at in whole with the need for capacity in the National Grid. A pile of turbines across SE England would have really helped, because a lot of the offshore wind and Scottish wind power has to be dumped, and gas generators fired up instead, due to lack of grid capacity to distribute that power across the country.
We should, of course, have completed upgrades to the grid by now, but they're late.
Here's a great article about "curtailment" as it's known: https://ukerc.ac.uk/news/transmission-network-unavailability...
Not only has the UK not stopped building wind, they have over 30GW of installed wind capacity and sell electricity to Ireland for most of the year.
The 'sell electricity to Ireland' bit here is doing an awful lot of work. It's more complicated than that.
For those who don't know, Ireland operates an all-island grid, and EirGrid (the grid operator for the Republic) owns SONI (the grid operator for Northern Ireland). That means that 'UK' and 'Ireland' in this has a large Northern Ireland shaped lump of ambiguity that statement.
It shouldn't be that complicated. The UK sells electricity to Ireland (and vice-versa?) in the same way that Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway sell electricity to the UK, and vice-versa.
Don't tell me EirGrid's EWIC that comes onshore at Dublin and Greenlink at County Wexford are an "NI-shaped lump". They are sources of electricity for the whole island, when it's needed, just like the UK's interconnects with the continent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-voltage_transmiss...
> Are they selling to UK that AFAIU stopped building wind 10 years ago.
... Eh? No it didn't; not sure where you got that.
Ireland and the UK sell power to each other on a demand basis, though in practice Ireland is usually a net importer: https://www.smartgriddashboard.com/all/interconnection/?dura...
Uh? No they didn't stop at all?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_Kingd...
Tories during 2015-2023 made construction of new onshore wind farms all but impossible (removed subsidies and made planning permissions very difficult). I would assume Labor could reverse these polices but haven't seen anything in news about this.
Now you have: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/08/... (2024)
Also https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/14/offshore...
Also https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/feb/10/uk-onshore-...
And a lot of offshore was constructed during that period.
So still claiming that we didn't build any wind power was false.
Maybe the difference is made up by renewables and not oil?
Natural gas is still the leader by a good margin.
Leading is not the same as replacing. See this figure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Ireland#/media/File:...
In 2000, coal was about 20% of the energy mix, gas another 20%, oil about 50%. Wind was 0%. In 2024 coal was about 2%, gas still 20%, oil still 50%, but wind grew to about 15%. It seems that wind actually replaced coal. It is not only logical, but good, that wind first replaced coal (dirtiest), and maybe from now on is will start to replace oil. Only after many decades, or maybe never, gas will be replaced.
I'm not sure where that data comes from. Oil was only around 3% in 2024.
https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/electr...
Primary energy compared to electricity as energy. The first adds energy used in driving, chemical industry etc. the second is just the amount of electricity generated.
Got it, thanks. So, not for grid electricity, as in this discussion.
Still, in the second figure of your link, you can see how gas is more or less stable since the start in 2005, and coal + peat is being slowly replaced almost 1:1 by renewables, mainly wind as hydro is stable and solar is marginal in Ireland.
Presumably it's also counting non-electricity energy generation. Road and rail transport still relies heavily on internal combustion engines.
energy vs electricity. oil is a much bigger part of the energy mix due to chemical manufacturing
No, it's not?
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/interactive-publications/e...
(2023 numbers)So natural gas was just barely more than renewables in 2023, but according to the source below the line was crossed in 2025 and renewables now provide more than all fossil fuels put together:
https://electrek.co/2026/01/21/wind-and-solar-overtook-fossi...
For those following along at home, it appears enir is (edit: as well as using EU wide data, not Irish data..) including non-electricity generation, or non-grid, energy use. Grid stats available here https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/electr...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47308462
Yeah, I think I was a little confused by the context of another thread and did not realize this one was about Ireland specifically.
Not sure what the downvotes are about, that looks to be exactly what happened.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...
It isn’t.
Ireland has essentially no working oil power generation capacity these days (I think the only ones are a couple of small diesel units on islands, which are not even connected to the national grid). Moneypoint was replaced with some combo of wind, gas and imports.
(Moneypoint was actually built originally due to Ireland's over dependence at the time on oil for power generation; after the oil crisis, initially ESB attempted to build a nuclear plant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnsore_Point#Cancelled_nucle...), but it was such a political minefield that it was canceled, leading to Moneypoint.)
Oil stayed more or less steady, so yes, it did.
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