IT IS UNDERSTANDABLE why an Irish government minister would feel wary about committing to any deadline for a big infrastructure project.

The National Children’s Hospital, the Cork/Limerick motorway, MetroLink, the Luas extension … the list of these developments which have faced years-long delays goes on and on and on.

So now, adding multiple offshore wind farms to the pile, the temptation is to just shrug.

Ireland pledged to have 5 gigawatts [GW] of offshore wind energy operating by 2030. The aim was built around plans for six large offshore windfarms, each capable of supplying hundreds of thousands of homes with electricity. 

Delivering these six would also have gone a long way to meeting the country’s binding 2030 climate and emissions targets. It also just seems like a sensible way for a windy island nation to generate a sustainable source of clean energy.

There was plenty of hope at the start of the 2020s, with ministers and industry figures saying that Ireland could become the ‘Saudi Arabia’ of offshore wind energy.

Now that we are rapidly approaching the end of the decade, that optimism sadly appears to have been misplaced.

It is now 100% certain that the 2030 target will be missed. The previous goal was for the first six offshore wind farms to be generating electricity by the end of the decade. One of those has since dropped out of contention entirely, citing harsh weather and 23 metre-high waves at the site. 

Of the remaining five, it now looks unlikely that a single one will make the 2030 deadline.

Darragh O’Brien, the Environment Minister, recently admitted this in the Dáil.

“Subject to planning approval, I anticipate that some of these projects will be in construction by 2030,” he said. 

“I do not see any of them being electrified, although there is the possibility of one, with a fair wind.”

Just a few weeks ago, a request for further data on how the project would impact birds pushed one of the remaining five back by an additional eight months.

What was once a source of optimism for Ireland risks becoming a disaster. These five offshore windfarms were meant to just be the start. Once those were finished, the plan was to build out dozens and dozens by 2050.

These were meant to easily meet the country’s electricity requirements, and produce so much extra energy on top of it that Ireland would be able to sell massive amounts to other nations. Hence, the Saudi Arabia comparison.

But if we fall at the first hurdle and are unable to get the first five off the ground, the whole plan goes up in smoke.

As it is, the lengthy delays which ‘Phase 1’ projects have suffered could be damaging enough by themselves, making other investors wary of moving into the Irish market.

It will also impact the delivery of ‘Phase 2’, previously meant to follow seamlessly behind Phase 1.

Instead, the best case is now a stuttering Phase 1 rollout, with staggered delivery of the first five into the 2030s.

Most of these were initially expected to be operational around 2028.

Main challenges 

The key reasons for the delays relates to Ireland’s planning process. Here’s a quick rundown of some key challenges:

• Planning regulators were not used to dealing with such large and technically complex projects, meaning the assessments have taken far longer than first expected. Developers have been asked for more information on top of their initial planning applications.
• Bird surveys have emerged as a key issue, with developers asked to give detailed reviews of the impact of their projects on local wildlife.
• There have been problems with the technical aspect of connecting these windfarms to Ireland’s electricity grid.

For an example of how this has worked in practise, take the North Irish Sea Array (NISA), the proposed 500MW windfarm off the coasts of Dublin and Louth.

• June 2024 – Submits its planning application 
• April 2025 – Almost a year after its initial submission, developers get a 47-page request for further information (RFI) from planning officials
• June 2026 – It takes the developers over a year to gather the info for the response

The developers argued that the RFIs went beyond what was normally expected, while planning officials again pointed to the complexity of dealing with these enormous applications. 

Regardless of who is right, these delays have completely disrupted Ireland’s offshore wind development plan.

Going back to the original timeline, it was roughly:

• 2030 – have 5GW of offshore up and running
• 2040 – 20GW
• 2050 – 37GW

For context, Wind Energy Ireland estimated that about 15GW of offshore wind would meet Ireland’s annual electricity requirements by 2050. 

The five remaining Phase 1 projects have a combined capacity of 3.8GW. On top of that, a separate 900MW [equal to 0.9GW] project called Tonn Nua, located off the coast of Waterford, got off the ground late last year. 

The developers, the ESB and Danish firm Ørsted, currently expect it to be generating power by about 2034.

This means that Ireland is on track to have 4.7GW of offshore wind ready by the early 2030s. 

Development work for anything beyond these six projects remains very much in the early phase and is unlikely to be ready anytime before the mid-2030s. It means that there is already very little chance of Ireland meeting its 2040 target.

A crucial aspect to this is that Ireland is switching development models. Previously, it was ‘developer-led’. Private companies decided where to build. From now on, the government decides the site, running auctions to award development contracts.

This is a good strategy in theory, allowing the state to plan better. In practice, this approach has suffered from the same delays which plague all Irish infrastructure development. The government previously hoped that Tonn Nua would be generating power by 2030. With the delays in holding the auction, that timeline has now extended considerably.

In addition to Tonn Nua, the government is planning to award contracts for three more projects on the south coast. The next one is for a site called Lí Ban. 

The government expects to hold the auction for the site in the back half of 2027, with the industry estimating that it will be able to support about 1.1 – 1.5GW. 

Going by the Tonn Nua timeline (contract awarded in late 2025, expected delivery in 2034), we can expect Lí Ban to be finished sometime around 2036. 

This would leave us with just over 6GW by then, and likely falling well short of the 20GW hoped for by the end of the decade. And that depends on the existing projects not facing further roadblocks. Based on all previous evidence so far, that looks unlikely.

Too ambitious 

To be fair to planning officials, the delays aren’t all on them. Regulators were initially poorly set up to deal with the massive applications, being short on staff and technical expertise. This was something that An Bord Pleanála raised publicly as far back as early 2023. 

It is now clear that the initial government aims and timelines were too ambitious, with little chance of ever working based on how our planning system functions.

While we can hold an attitude of ‘better late than never’, the stuttering rollout of the Phase 1 offshore wind projects gives a poor impression which could prove hard to shake.