20 countries with 90% or more of their electricity supplied by non-nuclear & non-fossil fuel energy sources would disagree with that utterly uninformed statement.
Only if their primary source is hydro-electric or geo-thermal.
There's absolutely no need to burn hydrocarbons
My solar panels would also like a quick word.
I'm sure you are aware that domestic users consume around 27% of electricity in Ireland. The rest is commercial, industrial and agricultural etc.
Just because we consistently choose-via our electoral and legal systems- to prioritise narrowly defined short term individual interests over the long term common good doesn't mean it's impossible to run an electricity grid entirely on renewables.
I agree; that's not the reason. The reason is that the supply is unreliable (unless it's manly comprised of hydro-electric or geo-thermal. In Ireland we'd need a minimum of 40% redundant capacity of hydrocarbon generation. There is aa long thread about nuclear power elsewhere on this site but other that ideological bias and an anti-technology luddite bias there is no reason not to use nuclear power. In the US alone it has saved tens of thousands of lived over the last 60 years by reducing air pollution.
You might as well say that because we can't manage to build reasonably priced apartments that the only viable alternative to a 3 bed semi-D is a tent.
No, you may as well say that since 1950's technology wasn't particularly safe by modern standards we shouldn't use modern technology.
Let's be very clear- technology isn't an obstacle and neither is economics. The only problem is we the people, primarily in the form of voters and litigators...
I agree. There's no technological reason not to completely decarbonise our power generation network. The only obstacle is those who reject science for ideology.
Oh, and we already consume a fair amount of nuclear power. It comes from Wales. Next year, all going according to plan, we'll consume even more when the Celtic Interconnector is operational. The late great Dr. Eddie O'Connor's company Supernode has a very ambitious plan to build a European wide superconducting network to overcome the issues of transmission loss. That way we can sell wind power to Spain in the winter and buy their solar in the summer but we still need large capacity local generation and the only safe environmentally sustainable way of doing that is nuclear.
We should absolutely have more wind and solar, particularly solar, but we need large capacity generation as well.
m.independent.ie