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Ireland’s failure to investigate floating wind farms is shameful

Are Irish winds and waves so different that we have to re-invent wind energy technology?

The outgoing Government has made so little progress on wind power that we have to question their seriousness about it. Photograph: iStock
The outgoing Government has made so little progress on wind power that we have to question their seriousness about it. Photograph: iStock
Bill Emmott
Tue Nov 26 2024 - 06:00

It is a truth (almost) universally acknowledged among the political parties that Ireland must in future be powered by renewable energy, notably offshore wind, if the lights are to stay on and the country is to meet its climate goals. But that is where the reality-acceptance ends. On this supposedly critical issue, the main parties’ manifestoes are masterpieces of banality and evasion.

If a Fianna Fáil candidate knocks on your door, ask him or her why they promise to “select and complete a test site for floating offshore wind by 2026″ when the UK and Norway have already been thoroughly testing this technology for more than eight years. Are Irish winds and waves so different from those in the North Sea that Ireland has to start afresh?

If the knock comes from a Fine Gael candidate, whose manifesto states it is going to “fast-track” offshore wind development and “ensure that communities are consulted”, then ask him or her when it was that they (as opposed to developers armed with non-disclosure agreements) consulted the communities already faced with the planned Sceirde Rocks wind farm 5km off the coast of Connemara or the nearshore wind farms off Louth, Dublin and Wicklow, all featuring turbines as tall as the Eiffel Tower on huge concrete bases.

It is not that Ireland has done badly on wind power: last year, a third of Ireland’s electricity came from wind, chiefly onshore turbines. The problem is that despite abundant wind resources and Europe’s largest exclusive economic zone, the outgoing Government has made little progress, despite having Eamon Ryan, then the leader of the Green Party, as Minister for the Environment, Climate and (wait for it) Communications.

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This is why we should question the main parties’ seriousness about this. What seems to have happened is that the three-party Coalition has been trapped between a fixation that nearshore fixed turbines must be the place to start and an unwillingness to fully confront (or even investigate) the environmental consequences for some of the island’s richest spawning grounds for fish, molluscs, plankton and some of its best breeding areas for birds.

In 2023 Mr Ryan appeared to acknowledge this problem when he announced a move away from “developer-led” wind exploitation to a “plan-led” approach, without revealing any real plan. At the same time, without any explanation to the communities involved, he granted a derogation from that approach to all the Connemara and Irish Sea wind farms, encouraging the developers to submit applications to An Bord Pleanála this year.

Meanwhile, Ireland has recently been found in court to have violated the EU’s Habitats Directive of 1992, and is way behind in achieving the EU’s target of designating 30 per cent of its seas as marine protected areas by 2030. Legislation to enable that was promised a year ago but has yet to appear.

Those who care about the biodiversity in these nearshore areas are prone to being accused of “Nimbyism” (full disclosure: this author overlooks “Dublin’s Bay of Naples”). Yet the good thing about having a backyard is that you pay attention to its value, which is more than can be said in this case of the environment ministry. In reality, this island’s rich and spectacular coastline is Ireland’s frontyard, one that no government should casually or thoughtlessly damage.

The oddest and most maddening feature has been an official refusal to pay serious heed to the potential of floating wind farms which, being in deeper water farther out to sea, would do far less damage to the seabed and, moreover, benefit from higher wind speeds. That technology has been waved aside as “not ready” or, at best, something for the 2030s.

It is time to wake up to reality. A firm called Greenvolt this year gained consent for a commercial-scale, 560MW floating farm off the Scottish coast, due to begin construction in 2025 and to start producing electricity in 2029. Floating farms are under consideration in Taiwan, South Korea and Portugal.

Certainly, there are cost issues as well as a need to invest in the ports required, but the UK government included £134 million (€160 million) of public money for such port investment in its October budget, and held an auction in September which Greenvolt won for price-capped electricity supply rights. If Ireland fails to invest in its own ports such as Shannon Foynes, floating turbines can and will be towed across the Irish Sea from UK ports such as Port Talbot, where the corresponding jobs will also be created.

[ Residents raise concern as Ireland’s six new offshore wind farms move closer to reality ]

Meanwhile, the Dublin Array, a 824MW fixed farm that proposes up to 50 mega-turbines on the Kish and Bray sandbanks just 10km from the shore, is not due, on its own probably over-optimistic schedule, to produce electricity until 2030. More likely, given the Government’s failure to consult or to adhere to EU directives, these applications will be tied up in objections for years to come.

If that Fine Gael candidate knocks on your door, you might ask them how all this squares with their manifesto’s promise that Ireland will be “a Green Energy Leader”.

Bill Emmott, a naturalised Irish citizen, is a former editor of the Economist