I think it re-enforces the confusion that wind/solar is the best strategy to reduce CO2 emissions. It may be in some places, but not everywhere, it may even be counter-productive. For instance, France has low CO2 emission as most of its electricity is from nuclear plants. If global warming is the most immediate treat, it would make little sense to dismantle them now. There are much better investments to make than buying solar panels. That's an issue I'm having with the green party in France who doesn't seem to recognize this.

I agree that it doesn't make sense to dismantle safe nuclear plants within their normal operating lifetime, but I'm not convinced it makes sense to build any more - and the lead time is about a decade!

Out of interest - what would you say those better investments are, that we could make?

I'm not an expert but in France where electricity production is nuclear, I'd say renovating housing (heating systems/insulation), promoting public transportation and discouraging the use of polluting vehicles, improving industry efficiency...

Agree - though with the amount that we currently subsidise nuclear in the UK, I'd rather we did both (invest in non-engery producing green tech AND invest in renewables)

You gave the answer in your own question. The fact that it is not a constant 37% is the problem here. What do you do when you get 10x less wind than the average? People still expect the same services (train, heaters..) to run

It's wind. It can't be a constant. Winds vary.

So all that matters is having a suitable mix, including wind, to produce low or no emission power. It will also include hydro and pumped storage, of which Ireland has several. There's probably not many suitable sites they aren't already using. Solar and possibly wave or tidal too.

That they're not going fast enough (no one is) still doesn't make it greenwashing.

Then and only then they use other power sources. Even if those sources are coal, so what? It’s not like the coal plants have to run 24/7 even when the wind is blowing.

It means you have to dimension your coal power plants so that they can cover the case where there is no wind and accept to not use them when there is plenty of wind. And that does not sound economically good [1]: "Fixed costs combined with lower running hours are devastating for coal power economics." To be clear I am not advocating for using coal instead of renewables. However advertising a total amount of "clean" intermittent energy produced without talking about what happens the rest of the time is greenwashing.

[1] https://www.carbontracker.org/understanding-operating-cost-c...

I don’t think that “wind power makes coal more expensive” is a good argument against wind, especially as the majority appear to agree that coal is bad and we should have less of it. Also, didn’t the coal plants already exist before the wind turbines were built? So they’re already at the size for fallback supply?

I am not making an argument against wind. I am making an argument against claims that amount of kWh generated by intermittent sources has the same economical value as the same amount generated by sources we can pilot to match the demand. "the majority appear to agree that coal is bad and we should have less of it". The majority also agrees that they don't want their electricity bill to rise. Coal plants need to be maintained and upgraded to match regulations. That's a cost after construction that you have to pay for even if you're not running the plant

> I am making an argument against claims that amount of kWh generated by intermittent sources has the same economical value as the same amount generated by sources we can pilot to match the demand.

In that case, I think we agree. I’m still anticipating alternative balancing solutions, but we agree on this.

As the capacity factor of wind is something like 30-40%, it's not "then and only then" those fossil plants will be running, it's most of the time. To reach 2C targets that's not nearly good enough.

Wind produced 37% of the country’s energy so far this year. That’s 37% not produced by coal. That it isn’t a complete solution should not be classified as a dealbreaker especially given it’s still growing and power supplies are multi-sourced anyway.

Sure, it's A LOT better than doing nothing. Just saying that merely more of the same isn't necessarily a pathway towards deep decarbonization.

That's what interconnects partly are for. Ireland is an island, but its grid is no longer separated from the rest of Europe. We're getting closer to a point where, when we have a surplus, it can get sent elsewhere, and when we have a deficit, it can be pulled from elsewhere.

Sure. If you assume that electricity from renewables are randomly distributed in time across your grid then all countries can do that. Unfortunately it's not the case (it's night time in Ireland and France at roughly the same hours) and so this model relies on the fact that other countries have non intermittent power sources that can kick in when it's night time and there is no wind. You've just moved the problem

Let's get one thing straight here: neither I nor anybody else is arguing that renewables (which are currently mostly intermittant) can replace non-renewable sources. They are, however, complementary: the more power you generate from the renewables, the longer you can stretch out the supply of the non-renewables. And that is an unqualified good.

Of course the problem just moved. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, because the way that it moves can itself be beneficial.

> If you assume that electricity from renewables are randomly distributed in time across your grid then all countries can do that.

That's not an argument I'm making. The closest I come to that is that the distribution of power sources across different interconnected grids can compensate for each other.

Distribution isn't random: geography figures into this hugely. Ireland has vast areas off its Atlantic coasts to put off-shore windfarms in addition to the current mostly land-based ones.

Most wind power generated, especially off-shore, is generated around the time of peak hours. That means a potential surplus around the same time, which can be sent elsewhere, where they're also hitting their peak hours. At the risk of vastly oversimplifying things, power can flow back and forward over the interconnects, covering the difference, and we're good enough at forecasting usage and availability at this point that the surpluses and deficits can be accounted.

Intermittant and non-intermittant sources are complementary. The problem is moved, but