>No country will be truly coal-free
Being coal-free is possible. Being fossil-fuel free is harder. Most of Irish energy comes from Natural Gas and Oil - the former is what supplanted Coal, not Wind.
Being coal-free is possible. Being fossil-fuel free is harder. Most of Irish energy comes from Natural Gas and Oil - the former is what supplanted Coal, not Wind.
In 2026, coal now provides 0% of the mix while wind provides 30% or more. Peat burning has also been fully phased out while oil (Tarbert) is in the process of being shut down while Moneypoint has been converted to oil but only participates in the capacity market - i.e. as an emergency/backup source - and so barely registers in the mix.
And even if coal was supplanted one-for-one with NG, it would still be a net win - by halving the CO2 intensity of generation as well as being far more flexible, scalable and much cheaper to deploy.
There is absolutely no good reason to burn coal for electricity or heat in this day and age. If we had sane global leadership, every coal power plant left would be treated as a WMD and be bombed harder than that Iranian fuel depot.