The Moneypoint power station – credit, Charles W Glynn, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Ireland will become the fifteenth European nation without coal in its energy mix following a recent announcement.

The ESB Moneypoint power station was built in the 1980s to help alleviate the effects of the oil shock, and remains today in County Claire as the last coal-capable asset in the country.

It will be converted to burn emergency oil reserves following a surge in renewable energy production.

Even that is planned to cease in 2029, but starting from June this year, Moneypoint will no longer be present in the wholesale electricity market.

11 terawatt-hours of electricity was generated by wind turbines last year, and made up 37% of Ireland’s total energy generation, reports Ember, a renewables-focused think tank.

“Ireland has quietly rewritten its energy story, replacing toxic coal with homegrown renewable power,” said Alexandru Mustață, campaigner on coal and gas at Europe’s Beyond Fossil Fuels.

“But this isn’t ‘job done’. The government’s priority now must be building a power system for a renewable future; one with the storage, flexibility, and grid infrastructure needed to run fully on clean, domestic renewable electricity,” Mustață warned.

According to Beyond Fossil Fuels, Ireland joins Belgium, Sweden, Austria, Portugal, and the UK, who have already stopped using coal, accompanied by Spain and Slovakia who are also completing their coal phase-outs this year.

Cyprus, Lithuania, Latvia, Switzerland, Estonia, Norway, Malta, Albania, and Luxembourg never burned coal at the grid level. This leaves Serbia, Montenegro, Poland, Germany, France, Italy, Slovenia, Bosnia Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Finland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechia, Romania, Croatia, Greece, Denmark and the Netherlands who rely on coal to some degree.

Some of these have existing commitments to abandon coal like Germany and Romania, and others, like Poland and Serbia, who don’t. Italy, France, Greece, Finland, Denmark, Hungary and the Netherlands will reach their commitments in the next 5 years.

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