Irish renewables 2020 strategy holds place for offshore wind

18/06/2012

Ireland laid out a renewables strategy for 2020 which, though short on detail, backed further development of offshore wind, and began to mollify critics who believe Dublin has ceded too much momentum on offshore renewables to the UK.

The strategy comes just a month after Dublin launched the long-delayed second round of its feed-in tariff (Refit 2), and is yet another signal that the centre-right coalition elected last year genuinely views Ireland’s wind and marine resources as one of the clearest roads out of the economic abyss.

The policy document establishes five “strategic goals” for the end of the decade, including adding more on- and offshore wind capacity; building a thriving bioenergy sector; making Ireland a leading light in ocean-energy research; boosting the use of biofuels and electric vehicles; and upgrading and extending the grid to allow for ever-higher levels of renewables penetration.

Most of these goals had been expressed previously in one form another.

Still, bundling them all together, and having energy minister Pat Rabbitte proclaim that renewables is “at the heart of the government’s energy policy”, represents an important shift in tone for the Irish government, which has not embraced renewables with the same consistent fervour as, for example, Scotland in recent years.

Also important is Rabbitte’s commitment to personally chair a new forum that will track progress on the country’s 2020 targets and “ensure we solve any problems that might delay development”.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Ireland’s plan for outside investors is the government’s newfound enthusiasm for offshore wind.

The cash-strapped Irish government has unequivocally stated that it will not support offshore wind farms with public subsidy. The country already derives one-fifth of its electricity from its roughly 1.8GW of onshore wind capacity – one of the highest levels of penetration in the world – and it intends to double that contribution by 2020 in order to meet its EU targets.

But over the past year the government has rapidly warmed to the idea of allowing offshore wind farms to go up in Irish waters with the express purpose of flowing the electricity across to the UK, which, unlike the Republic of Ireland, will be hard pressed to meet its 2020 targets.

“Given the scale of our wind resources, in the medium term we could be exporting wind energy on a scale that matches the total electricity consumption of the country,” or about 6-7GW by the end of the decade, according to Rabbitte.

That 6-7GW would include both on- and offshore generation.

Last summer ministers from the UK, Ireland and the Channel Islands signed a preliminary agreement to co-operate on building a system of interconnectors to allow for a maximal exploitation of the wind and marine resources across the British Isles.

Rabbitte says he will further those negotiations next month in a meeting with UK energy minister Charles Hendry, with the intention that “those involved in generation of on- and offshore wind in Ireland will have an additional market to serve”.

A number of thorny questions must be answered before the UK can meet its renewables targets by soaking up green Irish electricity, such as whether, or how, the UK’s subsidy regimes – the Renewables Obligation at present, and contracts for difference from 2017 – would apply to projects in Ireland.

But Kenneth Matthews, chief executive of the Irish Wind Energy Association, says direct negotiations between Rabbitte and Hendry represents “solid government commitment on this matter, and presents even further confidence for investors”.

“We have seen a number of positive developments within the Irish energy sector in recent months,” Matthews says. “But we must stay the course and ensure that Ireland maintains the regulatory and financial certainty, and the delivery of key grid infrastructure, to meet its overall binding EU 2020 targets.”

Ireland’s offshore wind sector has been dead in the water since 2004, when the 25MW first phase of Arklow Bank project was commissioned by Airtricity (now owned by SSE), with the previous government preferring to support the onshore sector.

There are five more major offshore wind projects at various stages of development in Irish waters representing 2.6GW of capacity, at least some of which could be built before 2020 if there was a market for the output. The projects include the Codling Bank project, backed by Fred Olsen Renewables, and the Dublin Array, backed by Irish developer Saorgus Energy.

By Lê My

Irish renewables 2020 strategy holds place for offshore wind

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