Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

redfloatplane

(June 2025)

cbdevidal

Just in time for an energy crisis :-)

CalRobert

Great to see, hopefully they can end turf burning too. (For those unaware it's basically where you take a wetland habitat that's also an amazing carbon store, cut it in to chunks, dry it out, and burn it for a very dirty heat source)

eitau_1

Damn, and my country consumes 11 million out of 13 million tonnes of coal used for heating houses in the entire EU.

reedf1

No country will be truly coal-free until they are a net energy exporter and they do not import any goods that use coal-based energy in their supply chain. Europe has de-industrialized which means it has effectively exported its coal burden.

bramhaag

https://beyondfossilfuels.org/europes-coal-exit/ keeps track of coal phase-out commitments. 24 European countries still use coal generators, and 6 have not even planned to phase them out (Serbia, Moldova, Turkey, Poland, Kosovo, Bosnia). Never used coal power: Albania, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Switzerland, Norway Phased out: 2016: Belgium 2020: Sweden, Austria 2021: Portugal 2024: United Kingdom 2025: Ireland Phase-out planned: 2026: Slovakia, Greece 2027: France 2028: Italy, Denmark 2029: The Netherlands, Hungary, Finland 2030: Spain, North Macedonia 2032: Romania 2033: Slovenia, Czechia, Croatia 2035: Ukraine 2038: Germany 2040: Bulgaria 2041: Montenegro

okokwhatever

Once they see the oil rising this week plans will be shut down till new notice.

nixass

Germany on the other hands..

jorisboris

I feel we’re framing it in a negative way Our goal shouldn’t be to be coal free. Our goal should be to be 100% renewable. If we set up our goals in terms of what we don’t want, we end up in the situation we are right now: high energy costs, very dependent on energy imports and a high risk of loosing our industry

cauliflower99

Irish 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.

nxm

Meanwhile China and India are building out coal plants at record pace

brnt

I understand that American shale gas (the largest fraction of LNG imports to the EU) is by certain measures as polluting as coal. If correct, Europe needs to reconsider if the price (and political) volatility is really worth it.

s_dev

https://www.smartgriddashboard.com/roi/ Here is the dashboard for electricity in Ireland. Ireland is not industrialised in a similar way to other EU countries like Germany or Italy which has lots of heavy manufacturing. Irish industry is mostly composed of US pharmaceuticals and data centres occupying much of the energy demand. There is a bauxite facility in limerick which does come to mind but that sort of thing isn't common in Ireland.

fixxation92

Definitely a step in the right direction, but believe it or not-- I overheard a customer in Aldi asking for coal only last week! I couldn't believe it, the staff member didn't know where to send them

sourcegrift

In another news China opens n-new coal plants. All this greenwashing is a farce until import from non-green countries are banned

Zigurd

Dirty power generation, and dirty toxic hazardous industry in general, discriminate against the poor and minorities. That carries an enormous social cost that goes uncounted in discussions like the ones on this thread. Nuclear discriminates against capitalism. The cost makes the choice of nuclear irrational. The inability to insure nuclear in the private market makes it a travesty of free markets.

paganel

Suicidal move, Europe wide.

landl0rd

Ireland is a net energy importer who imports electricity from Great Britain. She, in turn, often imports from nations including France, Holland, and Denmark, who use coal power. As such, it's not really the whole story to call Ireland, "coal-free". It's the same as America outsourcing heavy manufacturing or chemicals to China and claiming environmental victory. It's true in a narrow construction of the concept; it does reduce the burden on one's own country. It is false in the sense of one's contribution to the global commons and externalizes those externalities previously more internalized. It is, in other words, a shell game. Ireland's dependence on imported energy continues to rise and the number continues to tick up on the books of other nations and down on hers, with her people paying the "guilt premium" associated with this accounting trick. They're not exactly dirty grids, but the fact remains, Ireland still relies to some extent on coal. Also note that, though she is building OCGTs and fast CCGTs elsewhere, she converted Moneypoint not to gas but to heavy fuel oil. HFO is quite dirty stuff, only a dozen or so per cent cleaner than the coal it replaces per Ireland's own EIS. This is likely influenced by the fact that the plant was specced to burn some of the cleaner thermal coal on the market, largely from Glencore's Cerrejon mine, with pretty low sulfur and ash relative to others. So, the delta from relatively clean coal (excuse the expression) to some of the dirtiest oil; large boilers like that are likely burning No. 5 or 6, aka bunker B or C in marine. Not sure if you've ever seen (or smelled) this stuff but it's the next thing from tar. Ireland could instead have chosen to pull in gas from the North Sea and reduced the emissions of Moneypoint by not twelve but fifty to sixty per cent with modern CCGTs. Even older, more readily-available OCGTs would give thirty to forty per cent. This is ~250mmcf, i.e. probably a 24" spur line. Though this likely necessitates a few hundred km of loop for the ring main to the west, it's less than a year's work with a competent American crew. Instead, she chose a paltry twelve per cent a few years earlier; when the other gas peaker capacity is installed, cooling infra and existing thermal plant talent base while paying to reconstitute all those on the other side of the island. None of this is to say Ireland's work on decarbonizing her grid isn't real, but "coal-free" rather tends to obscure the present state of things; it is generally understood to make a strong, binary truth claim that isn't subject to "mostly" and implies one is no longer dependent on coal. It therefore demands consideration of electricity's fungibility in a grid.

deanc

There's a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding of the global energy supply presented around me nowadays. I would urge anyone to stop what they're doing and read "Clearing the Air" [1]. It's completely reshaped my understanding of this problem, and I am far more optimistic after reading it. It addresses key questions such as "What about China?" and "Can we stop it?" [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222768021-clearing-the-a...

yanhangyhy

Try produce everything yourself and then call it coal-free