alt Hacker NewsIrish man here - Over the last few years, we've graduated from providing cheap energy to now importing most of our energy. We've seen huge energy price increases as a result. We're seeing more and more cost-of-living protests, the war now means more will suffer with fuel prices and we're still going ahead with closing down energy suppliers (this is a 2025 article but the point still stands).
To anyone praising these stupid, politically incentivised initiatives - congratulations to us on making the poor and middle-classes poorer.
But it's all good - we're saving the world I guess. The poor folks can sort themselves out.
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That's not how the international energy market works. You still have to buy your own, locally produced energy at international rates.
The huge energy price spikes are down to wars in Ukraine (gas, which is also used for electricity production) and the Middle East.
I do often wonder with this kind of thing whether an unspoken aspect of it is about not depleting the country's fossil fuels
From what I understand Ireland has very little natural gas, very little coal and a not particularly large amount of peat. If they didn't shift towards importing all of that would be gone in the very near future.
It's a bit weird how it gets branded as a solely green move when there's clearly other motives for it.
Here in England we now drag the coal over on smoke spewing ships from Japan and Australia, rather than mine it here. The sum total of CO2 is higher than if we just mined it here. Net zero box ticking.
Another Irishman here. Stop trying to harken back to some notional "good old days" that didn't exist. People are better off than they've ever been. Energy was always expensive relative to income. When I was a kid in the 80s, we weren't allowed to turn on the central heating unless there were arctic conditions. The main issue driving COL issues is the complete lack of social housing construction for the last 15 years. You can't blame the tree huggers for that. Renewable energy is a matter of national security, and prevents our hard earned money being sent overseas to regimes like Russia and all the charmers in the Middle East. Our very first electricity plant as a free state was hydro ffs.
We never had particularly cheap energy. The recent increases in energy cost were largely driven by gas price increases due to the war in Ukraine.
> we've graduated from providing cheap energy to now importing most of our energy.
... Eh? We've always imported most of our energy. Or, well, okay, since about the mid 19th century we've imported most of our energy. All coal used in Moneypoint was imported. We do produce some of our own gas, but it is not and never has been enough. The fraction of energy that we import has actually fallen somewhat due to wind and solar.
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This attitude is ill informed.
Ireland is richer than it has ever been. Poverty and housing difficulties have nothing to do with reducing emissions.
Ireland partly got rich by being a massive CO2 polluter per capita. Now we are rich it’s only fair we lead in transitioning to renewables. Renewables are cheaper now than most forms of energy production. Grids need investment.
I despair at these short sighted and fairly wrong on the facts views.