This. Fossil fuels are not cheap in Ireland, I think we only produce a small quantity of natural gas, everything else is imported. Ireland should be running towards renewables, we have no indigenous fossil fuels industry to lose and every watt we generate from renewables is money that stays in Ireland. We should be focused on reducing nimbyism and building out renewables.
Ireland isn't sunny enough for solar to help with AGW. In fact, solar in Ireland actually just frontloads and exports to the 3rd world the CO2 generated. Oh, and the power to make PV panels...comes from coal. On the other hand, if you just put a windmill next to an Irish politician, you could power the entire country.
That would only be true if solar panels had be trashed and repurchased every 6 months. But instead they last > 25 years, and can be recycled rather than trashed.
No, that's wishful thinking. You can have your own opinion, but not your own facts. Engineers actually calculate all this stuff. EROEI for instance means Energy Returned on Energy Invested. For renewables, its 4. That means under ideal conditions (albino of 1, 20 year lifetime), over the lifetime of the panel you get back 4x the energy that it took to extract the materials, make the panels and install them. So if you site the panel somewhere with an albino of .25 (Spain) you get about as much power out of them as they took to make and install. And that obviously doesn't actually help with AGW.
An of EROI of 4 would probably already include the poor sunlight conditions of Ireland or would be some old numbers based off old solar technology. Plus there's contention around EROI because it does ignore the fact that renewables can be recycled and many are used past their lifetimes, and of course it ignores the negative externalities of spewing the one time use fossil fuels into the atmosphere. There are plenty of studies and papers arguing over EROI and its veracity.
Also you mention albino and I can't find what that would mean in this context. At first I assumed you meant albedo but that doesn't seem to contextually match either. So I might just be misunderstanding your post.
The PV manufacturers themselves say its 4. Those studies you mention say you could make them at 10-30 in theory if you could somehow purify the poli-silica differently. If we made PVs in the west with natural gas (and carbon recapture), perhaps it could get to that number (but perhaps not). However, PVs aren't made in the west and the poli-silica isn't purified with gas but instead using coal. That's why those numbers are different. And for reference, we could have made those PVs in the west, however politicians chose not to.
You've not cited anything for this so far as I can see, but this claim is obviously false.
Reason being, the entire system in my driveway will have paid for itself in one year, including delivery cost and inverter and the aluminium stand it's mounted on (the small bit of aluminium in the stand is the most energy intensive part of the whole kit), and the weakest part of that system still has a lifespan of 25-40 years, and even that as a % reduction in output from peak not as a hard cut-off.
Even if 100% of the cost was energy, even with the 5x price differential between where I am (Domestic Germany) and where they were made (Industrial China, where the low energy cost is… ah… due to renewables, because coal's really expensive :P), it's obviously not an ERoEI of 4 even on the low end of that lifespan.
Given all that and doing the maths, what I will need to replace and when (or rather, kids whose mother I have yet to meet will need to replace when I'm in a retirement home), the ERoEI is at a minimum 14 even if 100% of the cost of replacement panels is energy.
The cost is almost certainly less than 100% energy. Every step of the industrial process wants its own profit margin.
For one the EROEI isn't 4 for renewables under ideal conditions, it differs wildly depending on the type and location and installation. It's true that for solar in Ireland (which are NOT ideal conditions) its on the low end, though still about twice as much as 4, and it's certainly not the case for wind which can have them as high as 20.
Second, I've got no clue what 'albino' is. Do you mean albedo? In that case, it's completely irrelevant for wind power. Ireland produces 20x more wind than solar, the latter is completely irrelevant in Ireland.
For solar albedo is relevant, but only if you have bifacial panels, which are still the minority.
In Spain albedo is relatively low but it has some of the highest direct sunshine hours in Europe. Albedo is high in places like the Nordics, which have fewer sunshine hours. In other words, EV is brilliant in Spain due to the abundant sun, yet surprisingly is still viable in a place like Norway precisely because of relatively high albedo, not in spite of it. This is why EROEI for solar in Spain can get up to 20. The idea that you get as much power as it took to make (EROEI of 1) is so wrong, and so obviously wrong, that it seems like you just don't have any idea what you're talking about.
For actual generation over a longer time period, in February 2026, 48% of energy used was generated from renewable sources, of which the vast majority (41% of energy use) was wind:
With 75% in 2023, it means there are still headroom for expansion without hurting the economics too much of existing wind farms. Denmark had a very clear growth of wind farms up to about 100% of demand during optimal weather, and then a very clear stop in growth afterward. On average it still only produce about half the energy consumed in Denmark, so over time I do not expect to see Ireland to go much higher than 50%. It might get a slight advantage given the improved wind farm technology to utilize low wind conditions.
I do see in the political goals for Ireland that they, like Germany and many other countries in EU, are relying on the idea to turn wind into green hydrogen once they hit that 100% during optimal weather. Peoples faith in that strategy has gone down significant in the last 5-10 years.
What does the renewables supply chain look like? Do you build the systems right there in Ireland? Panels? Batteries? How does that money stay in Ireland?
does this renewable policy of wind farms etc also extend to the rain forest being cut down for balsawood? or the landfilles the massive chunks of fiberglass coated wings then get put into?
I guess we need a new planet when we're done filling it with junk and have depleted all the rain forest etc
Like fossil fuels are somehow ecologically clean and don't cause massive deforestation themselves? Sure, renewables aren't a silver bullet and there's a real conversation to be had about proper disposal of turbine blades and PV cells, but it's pretty convenient how that same scrutiny never seems to get applied to fossil fuels.
That's because the EROEI of FF are in the 100s. The EROEI of renewables is 4. I'm sorry that the laws of physics are inconvenient to your politics but they don't care about your politics (or mine).
If you want solar PV to help with AGW, they must be sited somewhere with an solar albino > .25. That's about Barcelona in Europe and SF in the US. If you put solar PV somewhere with less sun, you are actually making AGW worse.
Now this is just moving goalposts. The comment I replied to stated that the problem with renewables was that they too pollute and cause waste that isn't easy to dispose of, and they also affect the environment in a negative light. I didn't even dispute that point, as I said renewables aren't a silver bullet and we should be pursuing as much variety as we can with our energy production & grids, whether it be fossil fuels, renewables or especially nuclear. But we should preferably be moving more towards the latter two and away from fossil fuels except in situations where they make the most sense, and also considering all the facts that usually get conveniently ignored when discussing fossil fuels, like their disastrous effects on the environment.
> The EROEI of renewables is 4
Saying "renewables" have an EROEI of 4 is disingenuous at best. "Renewables" isn't one technology, it covers everything from wind to solar to geothermal to hydro. That 4 figure comes from worst-case transitional modelling of buffered wind specifically, and even then it's a temporary system-wide dip, not a measurement of what these technologies actually deliver[1]. Wind and solar individually come in at >=10:1 and rising as the tech matures[2]. Geothermal actually is in the hundreds, but that obviously isn't globally applicable. Lumping all of that together and slapping a "4" on it is either ignorant or deliberately misleading.
And the "hundreds" figure for fossil fuels is pure fantasy. Conventional oil sits at roughly 18-43:1, and US fossil fuel discovery EROI has cratered from ~1000:1 in 1919 to about 5:1 in the 2010s[3]. A paper in Nature Energy last year took it further and showed that when you measure EROI at the useful energy stage - accounting for all the waste heat from combustion - fossil fuels drop to about 3.5:1, while wind and solar beat the equivalent threshold even with intermittency factored in[4]. So "the laws of physics" are actually making a pretty strong case for renewables here.
> If you want solar PV to help with AGW, they must be sited somewhere with an solar albino > .25
I think you mean albedo. And that claim has been tested[5], a satellite study of 352 solar sites found the actual albedo reduction was much smaller than what's typically assumed, and the warming effect was offset by avoided emissions within roughly a year at most sites. A separate study of 116 solar farms found a net cooling effect on land surface temperature[6]. The idea that solar north of Barcelona is "making AGW worse" just doesn't survive contact with the data.
> ...but they don't care about your politics (or mine)
What a deeply unserious tone to take in a discussion like this. Where in my comment did I mention politics of any kind? Is any mention of renewables in a positive light political to you, or is it where I questioned whether the same scrutiny gets applied to fossil fuels? Because that's not politics, that is just reality which you seem to care so much about.
Newsflash, you don't need to be a leftist (which is what I assume you're insinuating) to realize that relying solely on a very finite, heavily polluting fuel source that has already caused disastrous effects to the Earth is maybe not the smartest long-term play. That's not politics, that's just common sense and basic risk management. Not to mention the decades of propaganda, lies, bribery and other bullshittery that big oil has wrought upon us. You'd think people who call themselves true conservatives and free-market capitalists would be the first ones evangelizing against all of that, but apparently not.
I didn't know about balsa wood in Wind Turbines either until this thread - looked it up and found that it's being replaced with PET foam because of the problems caused by deforestation (etc)
90% of the coal that was being used comes from Colombia, thats not really even that far guys and I'm sure it's mined under the most stringent environmental controls.
The UK's deep mines would be spectacularly uneconomic. Some have been sealed permanently (for expensive values of permanent) and the supporting knowledge and infrastructure would have to be rebuilt.
Coal makes as much sense as a modern fuel as horse drawn buses do for transport.
...and, oddly enough, coal provides over half of China's electricity supply.
I suppose nobody told them about the future, where bauxite reduction can be done w/ wind energy.
Oh no somebody told China about the future. That’s why they sell everyone cheap PV panels, and are now building out the equivalent of the entire UKs existing solar and wind capacity every year. Plus they’re getting faster.
In 20 years time China gonna be entirely powered by renewables while we’re still having this silly argument about what the future is going to look like.
Rankine cycle efficiency can be up to 45%; monocrystalline solar panels ~25%? I suppose you aren't paying for the sunshine, but if cloudy days affected coal power, James Watt wouldn't be famous.
Luckily solar panels work for 30+ years while coal works for only as long as you burn it. You can also recycle solar panels, but try reversing entropy to get your coal back and you’ll see what’s up. Cloudy days are solved by wind, ocean energy, geothermal, storage, etc.
"Cloudy days are solved by wind, ocean energy, geothermal, storage,"
Or, as Homer Simpson famously put it..."I dunno; Internet?"
But seriously, there's no significant recycling of solar panels, coal extraction is a known process, and good luck running an industrial economy exclusively on renewables.
There’s the direct answer to your question, cost of installed grid battery storage are getting cheaper by the user and it’s completely viable option at present. It’s not some vague fantasy idea like power plants in space or something, just look at California’s energy mix during peaks that in just a few years has become dominated by solar+batteries.
For longer periods of low-sun in a climate like Ireland see the other renewable options he mentioned. Plus a couple natural gas plants for fallback that can comfortably sit idle until needed.
If some combo of renewables are used 90% of the time when possible, no one is going to be mad about modern clean-burning LNG plants compared to a toxic, expensive relic of the past like coal.
Current trends make it clear the future will be renewables, grid battery storage, and however many natural gas plants are needed for reliability based on local climate (plus keeping nuclear online if you already have it). And that “future” is pretty much here already in places like California.
I wonder how cheap one would have to make electricity to make up for CA's silly regulatory environment and confiscatory taxes.
Places like California, which is right up there w/ Tunisia as the best-case scenario for solar, will have so much surplus electricity that USX and Tata are rushing to build steel mills there to take advantage.
No one ever claimed CA would have “so much surplus electricity that USX and Tata are rushing to build steel mills”.
Your “concern” was that there is no non-fantasy means to deal with transient output of solar or other renewables, I showed you how that is being implemented in the real world as we speak to deal with CA’s notorious peak evening load without blackouts. And it will only become more cost effective over time thanks to economies of scale.
CA has just started bringing grid storage online in the last few years but it’s already making an appreciable difference during peak times that in the past years resulted in blackouts.
It shows the clear, achievable path to a renewable + battery (+ nat gas) future that’s 95% renewables and highly resilient. Grid storage isn’t a “10 years away” fantasy like anti-renewable advocates might wish and it’s the critical piece to make those plans possible.
What game are you playing, where the provision of electricity for industrial use isn't a goal?
Again-I have been hearing for 25 years about the infinite potential of solar energy in CA-and yet, even now, you need to play games as to when the cheapest time of day it is to charge your car from your residential address.
> there's no significant recycling of solar panels
There will be when it’s needed in a decade or two. Right now solar farms installed recently have years to go until they’re decommissioned. There’s already processes for it.
There’s no significant recycling of solar panels because they’re still in operation and don’t need to be recycled. Turns out solar panels last decades with only minor degradation so they haven’t needed to be recycled at scale.
They’re almost entirely glass and aluminium anyway. We know how to recycle glass and aluminium.
If you're going to make that comparison, you need to compare apples-to-apples and include solar efficiency in the coal too. After all coal's energy originally came from the sun. Plants converted the sunlight into energy at an efficiency of about 1%. A miniscule fraction of that energy went into the plant growth, and then a miniscule fraction of that energy was captured when the plant was converted into coal.
But it is abundant in Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and Poland. Also, there is nuclear power in France.
However, Russia and Ukraine are at war. Germany is willing to go green and destroy itself. EU hates Poland and other east European countries. And EU and the rest of the world can't disassociate nuclear power with weapons.
So I guess EU can enjoy their limited and expensive green energy.
Coal is neither cheap nor abundant in Ireland.