alt Hacker NewsI do often wonder with this kind of thing whether an unspoken aspect of it is about not depleting the country's fossil fuels
From what I understand Ireland has very little natural gas, very little coal and a not particularly large amount of peat. If they didn't shift towards importing all of that would be gone in the very near future.
It's a bit weird how it gets branded as a solely green move when there's clearly other motives for it.
> very little coal
For practical purposes no coal. There are no working coal mines in Ireland, and Moneypoint would have run entirely on imported coal since it was built. It was built with a bulk handling terminal for this purpose (very visible in photos of the plant: https://esb.ie/news---insights/inside-esb/moneypoint-power-s...).
Note that it doesn't have a rail link; even if there had been the desire to use domestic coal and someone had gotten a mine going, there would have been no way to get it there.