map of Irish wind farms here.

By contrast, Germany has nearly 20,000 MW of installed capacity, and Spain 12,000 MW. Even France is planning 3,000 MW.

Ireland, like the west coast of the United Kingdom, has some of the best onshore and offshore wind resources in the world.

Linking to the French grid makes sense in that case, in the same way the Danes link to the German and Scandinavian grids.

Wind is intermittent. You can only have a large percentage of your power from wind (typically over 15-20%) if you have alternative power sources and you can trade power: sell them power when it is windy, and buy it back when it is not windy.

Note offshore wind blows a lot more frequently than onshore—even a 10km distance offshore the wind is something like twice as frequent at the minimum speed necessary.

An expert investor in the field who owns power facilities in Ireland told me that a wind farm in Ireland is competitive without subsidy with a new gas fired power station. Since we don’t tax CO2 output, that means it is actually cheaper than a fossil fuel station.

Taking a leaf from the Danish book, combined heat and power units, providing neighbourhood and office park heating, can work well with a large proportion of wind in the total grid supply.

A gas fired station is limited to about 65% thermal efficiency (Cornot’s law again). A combined heat and power station can get 80-90% efficiency, if there is a strong, regular demand for heat.

Ireland should give up burning peat. It is the messiest fuel (other than lignite brown coal) in the world from a CO2 point of view, and it’s extraction causes huge environmental problems for local flora and fauna.

It’s a crime to burn peat when you have so much wind available.

Put it another way, the cooler the input water (sea water!) the better. the most efficient plants in the world are based on the sea.

The French have had to shut down some of their stations during recent heat waves: the rivers ran dry.

The only reason Britain has power plants in the Midlands and Yorkshire is the coal mines were there (and the big industrial consumers).

In general, it’s best to have your most stable sources of power (nukes run almost all the time) relatively close to population centres: hence Sizewell (Suffolk), Hinkley (Bristol), Dungeness (Kent).

Those jobs are high paying and high skilled, and they last for forever, because a nuke is a long life asset.

It’s no coincidence Blair, who is married to a Catholic, and is on the point of conversion, was the first British Premier able to conclude a deal with the Provisional IRA.

In general Unionists still have a big influence in the senior levels of the civil service and the Army. ‘Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right’ was a slogan from 1913 and the fight against Irish Home Rule, but the attitude is still there in Westminster

What is NATO for?

Who, exactly, is in Afghanistan at this moment?

Answers on a postcard, please.

The comment about environmental standards was meant more in respect of the 1980s & in the context of the “Irish solution” theme to the post. I don’t necessarily think that the same applies today.

Different people are opposed to the pipeline for lots of different reasons and “flat earth” was probably a bit strong but I would be critical of those who say they are opposed it on the risk assessment/safety issue.

I was more interested in the fact the pipline didn’t seem to come up in the discussions Maria had with her blueshirt friends about energy/security issues. We’re still burning peat but we’ve found some hydrocarbons only we can’t seem to agree on how to get them ashore.

Things are changing very slowly, just look at the whole flat earth aspect of part of the objections to the Corrib gas pipeline which I was surprised Maria didn’t mention in the context of any current discussion on energy policy in Ireland? In fairness, nobody else did either.

Leaving aside the small matter of those planned EU battlegroups for the moment (we’re in the Scandinavian one, if I remember correctly), Ireland is in PfP, which is generally accepted to be the waiting-room for full NATO membership.

If it weren’t for the Irish public having a pesky aversion to getting involved in Grand Military Adventures of the sort most recently seen in Iraq, I’ve no doubt that we would have been marched into NATO a long time in many in Fine Gael had their way (I learn now, some at CT as well).

There was a report in the Phoenix a while back that British Legion types coming over here to schools were engaged in activities that were very close to recruitment; there was never a follow-up to that article, unfortunately, so we don’t know if their welcome was rescinded after that.