> Another Irishman here, completely agree with your comment. My domestic gas and electric bills have never been higher, insane inflation for nothing more than political virtue signalling.
The only part of your bills that could be regarded as virtue signalling is the carbon tax, which is driven by government regulation. The vast increases in energy costs were driven firstly by Russia (when they invaded Ukraine) and the US (when they attacked Iran).
And this hits me too, I have (unfortunately) oil heating which has gone from about 500 to 800 over the course of the last week. Fortunately we filled up last month, but it's really worrying.
Ultimately though, the only way to fix this is to build a lot of wind (industrial scale) and solar (residential scale) as otherwise we're at the mercy of world events.
Unless you manufacture it locally, with a fully local supply chain, wind and solar are still susceptible to world events.
A LNG terminal would help. Lots of bad infrastructure decisions have left us extremely exposed to those external shocks you mentioned.
An LNG terminal wouldn't help with cost (it would probably increase it a bit, if anything, as the cost of building it would have to be paid back). It's desirable from an energy _security_ perspective; as it is we are very dependent on a pipeline to Britain.
Actually it should help with both, because a on-island terminal would also provide LNG storage capacity which would buffer short-term price fluctuations. We have zero such storage.
Again, our poor decision making around national infrastructure is on our governments. They left have left us completely exposed to international markets.
A lot of it relates to the planning process, they do keep trying to build things. One could argue that this is also their fault (and I do!) but there are good historical reasons (cough ray burke cough michael lowry) why we've ended up with such a bureaucratic, byzantine planning process.
Yes, there are many problems with the planning process, but as you conceded in another comment, the actual reason that we don't have an LNG terminal is that Eamonn Ryan nixed the possibility.
As usual with the Greens, perfection was the enemy of the good.
Yeah, even though I voted (happily) for the Greens, I was very disappointed in them not building an LNG terminal, purely for energy security reasons. I'd be super happy if it never got used, but it's a cost worth paying just in case.
American energy exports are turning around in the mid-atlantic to go somewhere else instead because Europe is getting outbid.
"My energy prices are high" because you are getting outbid. You can't stop getting outbid by building more transport infrastructure. That terminal will go unused.
An LNG terminal would make us more beholden to foreign powers.
> An LNG terminal would make us more beholden to foreign powers
This is a weird way to justify using LNG brought in through Britain.
An LNG terminal would not help for the current high prices. Europe is experiencing a gas price shock precisely because LNG is easy to store and transport. Asia gets half it's gas through the Strait of Hormuz, which is currently experiencing troubles. This means Asia is willing to pay a lot of premium for LNG, which in turn means that Europe has to match this premium otherwise LNG will go to Asia and not Europe.
Being dependent on gas is equal to being exposed to global shocks, unless you can cover your domestic needs purely with domestic gas extraction.
Europe was getting cheap gas from Russia. It makes a big difference, the US gas is much more expensive.
> Ultimately though, the only way to fix this is to build a lot of wind (industrial scale) and solar (residential scale) as otherwise we're at the mercy of world events.
I'd add that this is only part of the equation because: what do you do on an overcast day with no wind?
You need significant storage capacity before you can become isolated from world events. Until then, you need power generation that you can bring online on short notice: coal, gas, hydro, etc. Traditionally, gas was used for this because it's easy to store, quick to get going and gas plants can also burn coal if needed.
Unfortunately, the nice properties of gas (easy to store and transport) mean that it's a global commodity. It will go where they pay the most, which means that far away events can cause a price in gas prices globally.
> I'd add that this is only part of the equation because: what do you do on an overcast day with no wind?
Battery technology is really, really getting there.
And in the absence of any more improvements here (unlikely) you integrate your grids with other countries. That's harder for Ireland, but it's still worth doing.
Does this battery technology grow on trees in Ireland, or does it exist in a foreign (and perhaps one day adversial) nation, like China?
The sheer number of people in this thread saying, "we need renewables to be independent!", from countries that don't actually manufacture anything, is astonishing.
There's at least as much battery production of batteries in Ireland as there are viable coal mine sites.
Carbon taxes are huge, and they are 100% politically imposed.
And they're often disingenously included in fossil fuel pricing to claim that green energy is fundamentally cheaper.
I believe in climate change, and I believe in doing something about it. But being disingenous with the public is only going to create resentment and resistance to Net Zero.
> And they're often disingenously included in fossil fuel pricing to claim that green energy is fundamentally cheaper.
There’s nothing unreasonable about this: fossil fuels have huge costs associated with them that are invisible to the consumer. They’ve just been getting pushed off onto other people forever.
By all means, calculate an arbitrary uplift on the price based on your own definitions of externalities.
But don't expect me to take you seriously when you directly compare a raw price of renewable energy with an uplifted price of fossil fuels.
Especially when your quoted price for renewable energy ignores the cost of grid upgrades, storage infrastructure, and externalities associated with mining materials to manufactur solar panels and wind turbines etc (as happened recently in UK parliament when the energy minister did a very dubious comparison between energy prices)
> externalities associated with mining materials to manufactur solar panels and wind turbine
Solar panels can be recycled, so eventually they will need very little mining.
Have you ever recycled gasoline? Have you ever heard of the Deepwater Horizon?
I think you're being disingenuous while accusing others.