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)
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.
Great example of allowing perfect to be the enemy of good.
If major advanced economies are able to move their entire grid away from coal, it means the entire grid globally can move from coal.
"Ah", the critics say, "but manufacturing is so much more complex!"
Really? These are not countries without manufacturing. They have data centres stacked with the latest generation of Nvidia chips, electric rail, major capital cities, populations of millions...
... and of course, China agrees and is trying to move towards decarbonisation of their grid.
Yes, it'll take time, but it'll take even longer if you never start.
Coal is essentially obsolete for energy generation. It's the most expensive and least flexible option. Even sticking with fossil fuels, natural gas is much better. It sticks around because many plants exist already, but new ones don't make sense.
But: EU is the only effective player in the world that drives energy policy outside its borders, by being a massive market with regulatory power regarding its imports.
If you look at three figures: energy use per capita, emissions per capita, and GDP per unit of energy/emissions, and include imported consumption, the EU's are all trending in a positive direction for many years now.
So stating the EU has de-industralized and its progress on shutting down coal is therefore 'fake' and misleading because it imports its industrial consumption from other countries to which it has simply offloaded its emissions, isn't true.
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
"In 1979, a second oil crisis, this time due to the Iranian Revolution, again brought into question Malta’s energy policy and made the government seek alternatives. Between 1982 and 1987, four stream turbines were installed at the Marsa Power Station. This strategy could have worked if the environmental and human health impacts of the coal used at the power station had not caused the local population to protest. In 1987, construction of a new power plant, at Delimara, started; the plant was commissioned in 1994. In the meantime, the Marsa Power Station continued to be improved, with new turbines added to eliminate the use of coal. On January 12, 1995, Malta became independent of coal but consequently became fully dependent on oil."
This happened almost a year ago. Ireland has no normal oil generation capacity (ironically moneypoint has been retained as an emergency-only oil burning plant til 2030, but it would generally only be used in this capacity as an emergency measure when gas plants unexpectedly go down).
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
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.
Hey you're still better than Germany that closed all their eco friendly power down and started importing so much energy it's had an effect on prices in Sweden!
I mean, at least you shut down the coal plants, those are legit bad for the environment. Germans shut down nuclear which is clean.
Same in the UK. Instead of us generating electricity via coal, we get other people to do it less cleanly and import it instead. That way our hands are clean.
So glad you're taking the hit for the rest of us. Your sacrifice is totally worth the .001% difference you make, every little bit counts.
Why is it people can clearly see the recycling scam for what it was, but the idea of coal or carbon fuels makes them entirely unable to handle any sort of thinking that isn't entirely superficial and one-sided?
Maybe, like everything else in life, it's a complex series of tradeoffs, costs, and benefits, and you decide whether the cost is worth the benefit.
And if a policy being pushed doesn't make sense when all the costs and benefits are accounted for, then someone is doing something shady and making a shit ton of money, especially if there's a huge amount of smoke and mirrors and politicized talk.
Ireland's being used for things and it's obvious those in power don't care about and don't think the Irish people being affected by these sorts of policies can or will do anything about it. As that largely seems to be the case, I have to wonder if we're going to see a repeat of what seems to happen every time a government thinks that about the Irish and takes advantage of them.
ChatGPT : "tell me about China use of coal energy"
"China is by far the largest consumer and producer of coal in the world. Coal has historically been the backbone of China’s rapid industrialization and still plays a dominant role in its energy system."
- ~55–60% of China’s electricity comes from coal (varies slightly year to year).
- China consumes more coal than the rest of the world combined.
- Annual consumption: roughly 4–4.5 billion tons per year.
- China produces about 50% of global coal output
The west suffers while China does whatever it wants, at a Grand Scale.
Even if you ignore the climate impact, fossil fuels pollution causes millions of premature deaths a year, and unlike with global warming, that effect is localized. That alone should be reason to transition off of fossil fuels, especially coal which is the dirtiest.
Coal is the most expensive form of power still widely used and it's not even close.
Coal is literally just bad. It's hard as hell to transport, it's extremely inefficient to burn, and it produces a shit ton of harmful byproducts you have to clean up.
> We've graduated from providing cheap energy to now importing most of our energy. We've seen huge energy price increases as a result.
Wrong. As you can see Ireland always produced a very limited about of electricity from coal, around 11% ten years ago when wind was 10% less. In other words, wind simply replaced coal, not imports.
For the last 50 years gas provides the bulk of your electricity, but Ireland produces virtually no gas and has always imported it. The jump in prices was due to these gas prices increasing due to the Russia/Ukraine war as of 2020, it had nothing to do with import changes. Had you invested more in wind/solar, you'd be affected less.
In fact Ireland barely imports anything at all, over the last ten years the net import are close to zero. 2025 was a peak year for imports but even then imports constituted a small 13%, whereas 2024 was a year where Ireland was a net exporter, as was 2020, and 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019. In fact of the last ten years it was a net exporter 7 times, more than twice as often as the 3 years it was a net importer. And its imported when the UK has cheaper electricity prices, otherwise there'd be no reason to import.
So your entire argument isn't true. Wind/solar can beat coal on a cost-basis now, evidenced by the fact that the average existing coal plant isn't running half the time because it's more expensive, let alone building out more coal. The smartest thing to have done is mass-invest in solar/wind in a country with a population density 4x lower than the UK.
1. Emissions matter, not the particular fuel source they come from. Most places cannot meet 100% of their needs, or even 100% of their growth in needs, with renewables so they must use and even grow some fossil fuel sources.
India has vast coal reservers, and is the second largest producer in the world, whereas they aren't a major oil producer. Hence they use coal. Similar with China.
If the story was about some country shutting down their last natural gas plant instead of their last coal plant, no doubt someone would be pointing out that meanwhile the US is increasing natural gas production at a record pace.
In 2025 the US added 7 GW of natural gas electricity capacity, and India added 7 GW of coal. Natural gas generates about 1/2 the CO2 as coal, but India has over 4x the population, so the US added about twice as much new emissions per capita.
But we also need to consider how much renewables were added. That will be part of point #3.
2. India's emissions are 2 tons per year per capita, which is under 1/2 of the global average, which is about 1/3 the EU average, 1/5 of China, and 1/7 of the USA. Even if it takes them longer to get off fossil fuels than the other large countries they are likely to never come near the emissions levels per capita of those other countries.
3. They are actually making better progress at this than most others. 50% of electricity used in India is renewable, compared to 25% in the US, 40% in China, and 47% in the EU.
They are not just adding coal. They are adding wind and solar at record paces too. In 2025 they added around 7 GW of coal capacity last year, 38 GW of solar, and 6 GW of wind.
The US is doing the same, but with natural gas rather than coal. 7 GW of natural gas, 25 GW of solar, 13 GW of wind. About the same percentage of renewables (~90%) as India.
4. Yes, per capita is the correct measure, because the atmosphere is very efficient at distributing CO2 emitted anywhere to everywhere. A ton of CO2 has the same impact no matter where it is emitted. Unless you can make a good argument that some people have some sort of natural or divine right to a bigger share of whatever CO2 budget we decide Earth can afford, it has to be per capita.
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.
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.
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
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.
The top comment currently on this post is talking about the cost impacts being transferred to the poor and middle class with lots of discussion. I think people are well aware of and discuss the social impacts.
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.
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?"
I think this is very strategically stupid decision (or crime committed by high management). Those should be preserved and be ready for use in case things go south which is not inconceivable judging by what is happening around
Am am not against "saving planet" etc. Just make sure you still have a way to survive if high tech fails. Same as with let's abolish all cash without thinking what a nightmare it can / will cause one day
From the article: the Moneypoint plant will continue to serve a limited backup role, burning heavy fuel oil under emergency instruction from Ireland’s transmission system operator EirGrid until 2029.
88 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 89.6 ms ] threadIf major advanced economies are able to move their entire grid away from coal, it means the entire grid globally can move from coal.
"Ah", the critics say, "but manufacturing is so much more complex!"
Really? These are not countries without manufacturing. They have data centres stacked with the latest generation of Nvidia chips, electric rail, major capital cities, populations of millions...
... and of course, China agrees and is trying to move towards decarbonisation of their grid.
Yes, it'll take time, but it'll take even longer if you never start.
But: EU is the only effective player in the world that drives energy policy outside its borders, by being a massive market with regulatory power regarding its imports.
If you look at three figures: energy use per capita, emissions per capita, and GDP per unit of energy/emissions, and include imported consumption, the EU's are all trending in a positive direction for many years now.
So stating the EU has de-industralized and its progress on shutting down coal is therefore 'fake' and misleading because it imports its industrial consumption from other countries to which it has simply offloaded its emissions, isn't true.
Never used coal power:
Phased out: Phase-out planned:Definitely wrong - Malta has used coal power for example. See for example:
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/power-and-energy/mal...
"In 1979, a second oil crisis, this time due to the Iranian Revolution, again brought into question Malta’s energy policy and made the government seek alternatives. Between 1982 and 1987, four stream turbines were installed at the Marsa Power Station. This strategy could have worked if the environmental and human health impacts of the coal used at the power station had not caused the local population to protest. In 1987, construction of a new power plant, at Delimara, started; the plant was commissioned in 1994. In the meantime, the Marsa Power Station continued to be improved, with new turbines added to eliminate the use of coal. On January 12, 1995, Malta became independent of coal but consequently became fully dependent on oil."
> Never used coal power: Albania, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Switzerland, Norway
Well, sure is good the environmentalists shut down the German nuclear plants!
It would be good if we could modernize our grid to support easier exchange of power from north to south and vise versa.
Shutting down the nukes is inversely proportional to homeopathy popularity in Germany. That says it all
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
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.
I mean, at least you shut down the coal plants, those are legit bad for the environment. Germans shut down nuclear which is clean.
Why is it people can clearly see the recycling scam for what it was, but the idea of coal or carbon fuels makes them entirely unable to handle any sort of thinking that isn't entirely superficial and one-sided?
Maybe, like everything else in life, it's a complex series of tradeoffs, costs, and benefits, and you decide whether the cost is worth the benefit.
And if a policy being pushed doesn't make sense when all the costs and benefits are accounted for, then someone is doing something shady and making a shit ton of money, especially if there's a huge amount of smoke and mirrors and politicized talk.
Ireland's being used for things and it's obvious those in power don't care about and don't think the Irish people being affected by these sorts of policies can or will do anything about it. As that largely seems to be the case, I have to wonder if we're going to see a repeat of what seems to happen every time a government thinks that about the Irish and takes advantage of them.
"China is by far the largest consumer and producer of coal in the world. Coal has historically been the backbone of China’s rapid industrialization and still plays a dominant role in its energy system."
- ~55–60% of China’s electricity comes from coal (varies slightly year to year).
- China consumes more coal than the rest of the world combined.
- Annual consumption: roughly 4–4.5 billion tons per year.
- China produces about 50% of global coal output
The west suffers while China does whatever it wants, at a Grand Scale.
Coal is literally just bad. It's hard as hell to transport, it's extremely inefficient to burn, and it produces a shit ton of harmful byproducts you have to clean up.
From what, turf? Back in the 1980s Ireland was importing coal from Poland because domestic mines weren't efficient. You're full of it.
You can see here the electricity figures in Ireland: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/IE/all/yearly
> We've graduated from providing cheap energy to now importing most of our energy. We've seen huge energy price increases as a result.
Wrong. As you can see Ireland always produced a very limited about of electricity from coal, around 11% ten years ago when wind was 10% less. In other words, wind simply replaced coal, not imports.
For the last 50 years gas provides the bulk of your electricity, but Ireland produces virtually no gas and has always imported it. The jump in prices was due to these gas prices increasing due to the Russia/Ukraine war as of 2020, it had nothing to do with import changes. Had you invested more in wind/solar, you'd be affected less.
In fact Ireland barely imports anything at all, over the last ten years the net import are close to zero. 2025 was a peak year for imports but even then imports constituted a small 13%, whereas 2024 was a year where Ireland was a net exporter, as was 2020, and 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019. In fact of the last ten years it was a net exporter 7 times, more than twice as often as the 3 years it was a net importer. And its imported when the UK has cheaper electricity prices, otherwise there'd be no reason to import.
So your entire argument isn't true. Wind/solar can beat coal on a cost-basis now, evidenced by the fact that the average existing coal plant isn't running half the time because it's more expensive, let alone building out more coal. The smartest thing to have done is mass-invest in solar/wind in a country with a population density 4x lower than the UK.
India has vast coal reservers, and is the second largest producer in the world, whereas they aren't a major oil producer. Hence they use coal. Similar with China.
If the story was about some country shutting down their last natural gas plant instead of their last coal plant, no doubt someone would be pointing out that meanwhile the US is increasing natural gas production at a record pace.
In 2025 the US added 7 GW of natural gas electricity capacity, and India added 7 GW of coal. Natural gas generates about 1/2 the CO2 as coal, but India has over 4x the population, so the US added about twice as much new emissions per capita.
But we also need to consider how much renewables were added. That will be part of point #3.
2. India's emissions are 2 tons per year per capita, which is under 1/2 of the global average, which is about 1/3 the EU average, 1/5 of China, and 1/7 of the USA. Even if it takes them longer to get off fossil fuels than the other large countries they are likely to never come near the emissions levels per capita of those other countries.
3. They are actually making better progress at this than most others. 50% of electricity used in India is renewable, compared to 25% in the US, 40% in China, and 47% in the EU.
They are not just adding coal. They are adding wind and solar at record paces too. In 2025 they added around 7 GW of coal capacity last year, 38 GW of solar, and 6 GW of wind.
The US is doing the same, but with natural gas rather than coal. 7 GW of natural gas, 25 GW of solar, 13 GW of wind. About the same percentage of renewables (~90%) as India.
4. Yes, per capita is the correct measure, because the atmosphere is very efficient at distributing CO2 emitted anywhere to everywhere. A ton of CO2 has the same impact no matter where it is emitted. Unless you can make a good argument that some people have some sort of natural or divine right to a bigger share of whatever CO2 budget we decide Earth can afford, it has to be per capita.
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.
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.
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.
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...
Am am not against "saving planet" etc. Just make sure you still have a way to survive if high tech fails. Same as with let's abolish all cash without thinking what a nightmare it can / will cause one day