Ireland is arguably the windiest country in Europe and a big supporter of clean energy, so it is something of an anomaly that the island nation has not installed any offshore wind projects since completing the 25MW Arklow Bank pilot project in 2004.

But this anomaly is unlikely to last much longer. More than 2.6GW of projects are in the pipeline, with at least two major Irish Sea projects — the 520MW Arklow Bank second phase and the 330MW Oriel development — fully permitted and waiting for the starter’s pistol.

At present, onshore wind is Ireland’s cheapest and biggest source of power on the island with 3.36GW installed, but as Pat O’Doherty, chief executive of state-owned utility ESB, tells Recharge: “Ireland is probably coming close to exhausting its onshore wind capability and we have to move offshore.”

The country is also facing an energy shortage, while the National Offshore Wind Energy Association of Ireland argues that the country will not be able to meet its binding 40% renewables by 2020 EU target without installing 1GW of offshore wind in the next two-and-a-half years.

On top of this, the Irish public and parliament, the Dáil, are generally supportive of wind power and green energy, with members of parliament — known as Teachtaí Dála in Irish, or TDs — voting earlier this year to stop the government issuing new oil & gas exploration licences.

Nevertheless, the development of offshore wind largely depends on the final design of Ireland’s forthcoming green-energy auction system, the Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (RESS), which is due to be unveiled soon, with the first auction set to be held next year.

Many politicians and industry officials are calling for the RESS to include offshore wind as a separate category in order to give the sector some guarantee of ongoing support and enough visibility to encourage medium- to long-term investment.

“A technology-neutral approach will not give offshore wind projects investment clarity in the time frame that we need, or enable a local supply chain to develop,” says James O’Hara, offshore project manager at developer SSE Ireland.

Eamon Ryan TD, leader of Ireland’s Green Party, tells Recharge that the government should “consider offshore and onshore wind, and solar, as separate generating sources within the new RESS structure in order to give each technology the opportunity to flourish”.

Denis Naughten, the Irish climate action and environment minister, told a recent renewables conference in Dublin that the country has “real potential” as “the fourth-largest European nation in terms of size when we include our sea area”.

“The potential from the technological advances around the world in offshore wind and offshore renewables in the last ten to 15 years is huge,” he said.

However, he warned that the focus of the RESS will be on cost reduction. “I want to be clear that while we diversify our renewable technology mix through increased renewables deployment and energy auctions, we will do so in a sustainable and responsible manner, with a focus on ensuring the effectiveness and value for money for customers.”

In an industry consultation earlier this year, the Department of Communications, Climate Action & Environment noted that offshore wind may require its own auction category. But a spokesman tells Recharge that a decision is yet to be taken, adding: “The design of the new scheme has included an extensive independent economic appraisal which compared the cost of supporting a range of commercial renewable technologies, including wind energy — offshore and onshore — at various scales including micro-generation; solar PV; and anaerobic digestion.”

Another issue that needs to be resolved is for planning laws to be updated. The Marine Area and Foreshore (Amendment) Bill, which has been ready for several years, would streamline the offshore development consent process, and integrate it with the existing

onshore planning system. This bill would need to be passed to allow offshore transmission to link with the onshore grid.

The Irish government will also be influenced by its ongoing efforts to set a renewable-electricity target for 2030, which the Irish Wind Energy Association (IWEA) is calling to be set at 70%.

IWEA’s Energy Vision 2030 study calculates that a 70% target would require the country to double its current wind energy capacity of 3.4GW, in addition to around 2.5GW of PV and 1.7GW of new battery storage. A further 1.45GW will be delivered by the planned Greenlink Interconnector from the UK and Celtic Interconnector from France.

“The study shows not only could our 2030 landscape be driven by clean, homegrown renewables, but it will not cost more than using fossil fuels,” says IWEA chief executive David Connolly.

Connolly says that the future of wind power in Ireland depends on the 2030 renewables target. “If the target is too low, the renewables volumes we will have in these future auctions will also not be high.”

“Onshore technologies have served us extremely well to date,” says Stephen Wheeler, managing director of SSE Ireland, which is developing the fully consented €1bn second phase of Arklow Bank. “But we must be realistic that social acceptance to onshore energy developments is challenging, and greater grid planning and constraints are now in place. What has been successful for us in the past does not guarantee future success.”

Wheeler believes that the Arklow Bank project could be commissioned by the end of 2020 and therefore help prevent EU fines if Ireland misses its binding renewables targets.

IWEA chairman Peter Harte predicts the first offshore projects will likely focus on the shallower waters off the east coast, in the Irish Sea, with floating wind solutions likely to follow in the deeper waters of the west coast, in the Atlantic Ocean, around the mid-2020s.

Norway’s Equinor — formerly Statoil — an early pioneer in floating wind that built the world’s first floating project, the landmark 30MW Hywind Scotland, is keen to build a project off Ireland’s windy west coast. The company recently had a meeting with Naughten in which executives suggested that if the government establishes the “necessary framework” it could build a 300MW floating project there.

“Ireland has come up as a country which has taken a specific interest [in floating wind], and we have had meetings with them and are looking at opportunities to see where the best wind resources are located,” says Irene Rummelhoff, Equinor’s executive vice president of new energy solutions, adding that east coast projects were also a possibility.

Ryan suggests that floating wind projects could replace ESB’s 915MW Moneypoint coal-fired power plant in County Clare on the west coast, which is due to be decommissioned between 2025 and 2030.

Lead projects

Ireland’s only operational offshore wind farm, the 25MW Arklow Bank, is a seven-turbine “demonstrator project” developed by GE Energy and Airtricity (acquired by SSE in 2008) that was supposed to be followed up by a 495MW phase two — but co-developer Acciona Energy pulled out, leaving the project in limbo.

This phase two has since been resurrected by SSE Ireland at the same location, on a shallow sandbank 13km off County Wicklow, and is now a fully permitted 520MW project.

“If Ireland is to make up ground on its 2020 EU targets and beyond, then we need to fast-forward the build-out of large-scale renewable energy capacity,” says O’Hara. “We believe offshore wind can deliver consistent and predictable renewable power to the grid, and play a major role in bridging the gap.”

SSE Ireland also points out that offshore wind can unlock new infrastructure investment in Ireland’s ports and maritime businesses, while Arklow Bank phase two could create 60 long-term O&M jobs.

The 330MW Oriel project, near the border with Northern Ireland, is also fully permitted and took a big step forward last year when private developer Oriel Windfarm Ltd secured an undisclosed “major investment” from Belgium’s Parkwind, making it a strategic partner in the project.

Parkwind has considerable offshore pedigree — developing, building and operating 552MW of offshore wind farms in Belgian waters (Belwind, Northwind and Nobelwind), and constructing Belgium’s 224MW Northwester 2 and Germany’s 247MW Arcadis Ost 1 in the Baltic Sea.

London-based Element Power is also hoping to be among the first to construct a major offshore wind farm off Ireland, having taken over development of the up-to-750MW North Irish Sea Array in mid-April from local group Gaelectric.

“This site, in the relatively shallow waters of the east coast and near the large electrical demands of Dublin and fast-growing data centre industry, is ideally located to be in the first wave of large-scale offshore projects to be built in Ireland to meet our 2030 renewable-energy targets,” says Mike O’Neill, chief executive of Element Power.

O’Neill says that while onshore turbines will continue to be the main source of cost-effective power in Ireland into the next decade, offshore wind “will have become cost-effective enough for it to also be one of the main forms of renewables for the country”.

“For this to happen, however, the government must put in place the necessary licensing regime now to ensure that investment can continue over the coming years in the development of this critical future infrastructure,” he says.

In a similar vein, independent Irish wind developer Saorgus Energy sold a 50% stake in its up-to-600W Dublin Array project to German utility Innogy, which is owned by RWE but is being bought by E.ON. Under the agreement, signed in March, Innogy will develop the site, 10km off Dublin, through to planning consent.

Further offshore build-out is expected from ESB, which supplies about half the country’s power and has committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2050.

ESB itself would need about 1.5GW of offshore wind to reach its target of 40% renewables by 2030, says O’Doherty, who expects ESB to get its first steel in the water around 2022.

Projects in ESB’s pipeline include the 500MW Clogherhead site off County Louth and a 500MW array off Kilmichael Point, County Wexford.

The utility is also looking at two other Irish projects, O’Doherty tells Recharge, declining to elaborate.

“We’re looking at a range of consenting activities, early-stage consenting, and then we’re looking at some other commercial opportunities where other people have progressed their own developments to a point,” he says, before explaining that ESB is also looking at offshore projects outside Ireland.

With so many projects in the pipeline, and high hopes for the RESS, it is little wonder that the nascent offshore wind industry is so buoyant.

“By now, a well-oiled industry is capable of supplying and installing offshore wind power delivering energy at an impressively low price, and it will eagerly embrace the opportunities in Ireland,” says wind industry pioneer Henrik Stiesdal, a former chief technology officer at Siemens Wind Power.

Such sentiments are entirely accurate, but if the RESS does not offer offshore wind a fair crack of the whip, the Irish offshore journey may sink before it even begins.

Wind

Emerald Isle ready to shine in offshore wind