{"id":94635,"date":"2025-09-30T12:18:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T12:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/94635\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T12:18:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T12:18:10","slug":"irelands-high-price-culture-and-the-slow-transition-to-home-grown-renewables-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/94635\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland\u2019s high-price culture and the slow transition to home-grown renewables \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ireland\u2019s dwindling price competitiveness is perhaps the biggest challenge facing the economy. High prices<\/a> underpin a myriad of problems.<\/p>\n

They drive high construction costs and high house prices<\/a> and rents<\/a> as a result. They also drive the high cost of doing business here and the high spate of insolvencies in the hospitality sector which the Government is now trying to temper with a reduced rate of VAT (a move is expected in next week\u2019s budget). If headline inflation has dropped to 2 per cent, grocery price inflation remains elevated at 5 per cent and represents perhaps the chief strain on household budgets.<\/p>\n

There are perhaps several reasons for Ireland\u2019s high-cost economy, but high energy costs<\/a> is a big one. Because Ireland imports most of its energy requirements, the State is a price taker and therefore subject to the pitfalls of international energy markets \u2013 as the recent energy price shock illustrated. <\/p>\n

Eurostat figures show prices here are the third highest across the EU, almost 30 per cent more than the EU-27 average.<\/p>\n

Until we transition to home-grown renewables<\/a> \u2013 wind, offshore wind, solar \u2013 we will remain a high energy cost country and at the mercy of supply from elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Gas Networks Ireland<\/a>\u2019s latest energy mix data show coal fully exited the country\u2019s energy base in August following the closure of Moneypoint\u2019s coal-fired operations in June.<\/p>\n

But without coal in the mix, gas is playing a greater role in ensuring security of supply<\/a>, the company said.<\/p>\n

Gas, the lion\u2019s share of which is imported at elevated prices, generated 45 per cent of Ireland\u2019s electricity in August, a year-on-year increase of nine percentage points from 36 per cent in August 2024. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Ireland at risk of major power outages in absence of natural gas storage, EY saysOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

At times, gas\u2019s contribution peaked at 90 per cent and never fell below 13 per cent, \u201cproviding critical stability when renewable output dipped\u201d it said. Wind supplied 27 per cent of electricity, down eight percentage points on last year from 35 per cent. <\/p>\n

While moving in the way of renewables, these metrics reveal the slow pace of transition (Denmark now generates all of its energy requirement from wind) and unfortunately the likelihood of energy prices here remaining elevated for the time being.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland\u2019s dwindling price competitiveness is perhaps the biggest challenge facing the economy. High prices underpin a myriad of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[269],"tags":[2355,18,15912,440,10892,19,17,961,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-94635","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-cantillon","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-energy-crisis","11":"tag-environment","12":"tag-gas-networks-ireland","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-renewable-energy","16":"tag-science"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}