*Junior Minister, Timmy Dooley speaking in The Armada Hotel. Photograph: Nicholas Higgins.
OFFSHORE WIND OPPORTUNITIES for West Clare will not begin to blow until early 2027 at the earliest but its coastline has “a bright future” for development in the sector.
Spanish Point’s Armada Hotel was the venue as Minister of State at the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment with responsibility for Fisheries and the Marine, Timmy Dooley TD (FF) announced the publication of the National Designated Maritime Area Plan (DMAP) for Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Proposal and accompanying Public Participation Statement (PPS).
This will be the strategic plan to outline the development and management of offshore renewable energy resources off Ireland’s coast. The National DMAP will designate renewable energy sites around the coast that are suitable for offshore wind development, including fixed, floating, and floating demonstration locations.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Junior Minister Dooley said it was “a significant step” to publish the DMAP. “There has been a lot of talk about capturing wind in particular as a means to generate clean electricity for the country, it is recognised that there is an abundance of that and you can see that with the waves and the wind blowing that there is an abundance off the west coast of Ireland but it is other areas of Ireland too”.
Suitable sites will be identified by “a team of specialist planners in the Department”, they will build a map of suitable sites over the course of 2026 and will engage “communities that are going to be impacted, potential visibility issues for those that might be close to the shore, others will be further offshore, areas where the electricity will be brought ashore and the impact it might have on certain communities as well as fishermen and other sea users who have the potential to be impacted”.
He explained, “The idea would be that in the early part of 2027 that we would have a draft in place, a bit like what is often done for a County Development Plan and we go back to the various interested parties and try have that agreed by the end of 2027, it becomes the roadmap of suitable sites that we can then bring to auction and attract external investment to come like the big multinational companies which generate electricity of which there are many examples around Europe. At the end of 2027 we will want to have this Designated Maritime Area Plan (DMAP) that will identify suitable sites first of all that have the wind speeds appropriate for the generation of electricity and so far as we can to do it in conjunction with other users who are not overly impactful on their lives and livelihoods”.
With the launch of the plan taking place in West Clare, Dooley said “it is a signal” but not a guarantee that the area can be optimistic. “I can’t pre-determine what sites will be identified but it is recognising, it is a lot easier to explain it to people when you can see the swells in the sea, the wind blowing, there is huge potential for green energy, energy and energy generation has been a huge positive economic driver for the area of West Clare, particularly of Moneypoint, that was of its time, it was beneficial economically but was very harmful to the environment, all that coal and sulphur that was spewed into the atmosphere was not good, notwithstanding that the ESB did their best to cleanse as far as they could by bringing in new technology. Technology has changed now, we can generate electricity which will ensure we’re not damaging the environment from an emissions perspective but that we’re not contributing to the warming of our environment, our seas and atmosphere, we can try limit that which has been impacting so much and generating more storms and heavy rain during the summers, from a climate change perspective it is the right thing to do but there is an economic benefit to coastal communities because of this, construction of these wind turbines in our oceans is very labour intensive in the construction, care and ongoing maintenance.
Clare’s coastline has “a bright future” around it according to Dooley. “I’m hopeful that there will be sites identified that aren’t visibly impactful on the beautiful scenery which we have in West Clare but in areas that are suitable and could be harnessed to be brought ashore hopefully to Moneypoint and that the cabling can come in there, you have the infrastructure and they are talking about developing battery storage, hydrogen from electricity, you have the two 400KV lines which go east, it would look like a very suitable location and the ESB have a lot of plans for the site to make it suitable for bringing the electrons ashore when they are captured further offshore”.
With suitable sites for the DMAP not to be identified until 2027, there will be no major development including that of Moneypoint’s Green Atlantic project until then. “Moneypoint are looking at a number of things, they have already put in the big fly-wheel which is technology to smoothen the renewable electricity coming onto the grid, they are well advanced on a planning application to remodel their entire facility, they are recognising that they are preparing to be able construct and float out the turbines from the facility, they are also looking at a gas powered plant because the wind won’t be blowing all of the time but you still need electricity when the wind isn’t blowing and when the sun is shining, the gas plant they are looking at is much less impactful on the environment and battery storage when the wind is blowing and there isn’t a demand for the electricity that it can be diverted into batteries as a way of a back-up and storage. They have exciting proposals, a lot of it is geared towards being the location onshore where this electricity is plugged in, gets forwarded on to the national grid and potentially through inter-connectors onto the European grid. We’re well on the way to building that grid between the South-East coast of Ireland and France known as the Celtic Inter-Connector, there is export potential there”.
Developers such as Equinor and Shell left the Irish market in 2021 and 2022 due to the slow pace at which the offshore industry was moving in Ireland. Dooley believed the publication of the plan would offer a sense of reassurance. “That is the aim in the first instance, to demonstrate to the large multinational companies that Ireland is serious about capturing the renewable energies off our coastline, I would agree, we haven’t progressed as quickly as I would have liked, it goes back to 2020 in particular when there was a lot of excitement about the potential but these things are very slow and they are major projects which take time. We have done a DMAP off the South-East coast, we’ve identified sites down there, there will be a round of auctions beginning in November which these big companies will have an opportunity to bid for, I was very anxious to demonstrate to those companies, particularly those that don’t win the contracts that there is another pipeline of opportunities coming up.
“The auction at the end of November for the area off the South-East coast of Ireland is really aimed at augmenting what we already plan to have in place from the early part of the next decade from 2030 onwards, we expect that by 2030 but it will likely extend to 2032 of an additional 5GW of energy from those in that area and those already earmarked in planning. What we are talking about today is projects which will be from 2030 onwards, we’ve commitments around having an additional 15GW of energy by 2030 and 2040, in addition to those already in visible terms, that is a huge amount of electricity, it is a huge amount of construction. Rather than talking about it and saying we have the plans for the next decade, I was very anxious to hit the ground running, get the work done, identify the areas that were suitable, do the public consultation with stakeholders and then we’re in a position to go to auction and show the company that these are real live plans, it is not just wishful thinking, I am pleased that the Department has responded to my proposals in that regard, initially moved from just doing them on a peace-meal basis around the coastline to say let’s go and do the entirety of the coastline in one big bang over a two year period, that is being received well by the large multinationals that have the wherewithal to get the projects out”.
