Why Ireland needs to speed-up delivery of onshore wind

Wind farms can provide Irish people with affordable, clean and secure energy; but first, they must get through planning, writes Justin Moran, Director of External Affairs, Wind Energy Ireland.

The UK’s new Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband MP, was only 72 hours into his new job when he lifted the British ban on onshore wind farms. A week later, he announced a new taskforce, bringing together industry and government, to accelerate onshore wind delivery. By the start of August 2024, it was already at work.

Onshore wind development

It is frustrating to see that level of focus in Britain while, in Ireland, the development of onshore wind energy meets barrier after barrier. Unlike Britain, we are already a leader in onshore wind energy. The country’s wind farms provide a greater annual share of our electricity demand than any other in Europe, but the pace of delivery of new projects is slowing down.

Missing energy targets

A report published by Wind Energy Ireland in July 2024 shows that we are only getting around a quarter of the projects we need to match our energy targets through An Bord Pleanála. Many of the projects recently approved by the board have already been challenged in the courts.

Fewer projects mean higher energy prices for Irish families and millions more spent to import expensive fossil fuels. We need to build both onshore and offshore wind farms, new solar farms and battery projects, and reinforce the electricity grid in just a few years. Our planning system is simply not fit for purpose to achieve this.

Accelerate onshore delivery

The Government has established a taskforce to accelerate the delivery of onshore renewable energy, and it must prioritise fixing the planning system. We have seen other countries do this by applying new EU regulations like the RED III Directive, with Germany, for example, now granting planning permission to 1,000MW of onshore wind every month.

In Ireland, instead of this acceleration, county councils are zoning land to prevent the development of wind energy, including incidents where the local authority changed the zoning of land to prevent a wind farm from being built, after it was announced or had applied for planning.

Resolving energy delivery conflicts

There is a conflict between national and EU energy policy (to provide the affordable, clean, secure energy Irish people want) and County Development Plans, which, in some places, have been designed to block the development of new wind farms. Resolving this conflict needs to be as much a priority for the Irish Government as speeding up the development of onshore wind farms is for UK Minister Ed Miliband MP.

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