From Dundalk and Drogheda to Dalkey, Bray and Wicklow – the seaside locations with wind turbines on the horizon

In a small room of the old schoolhouse that serves as a community centre, with laughter wafting in from the adjacent scout den, a multi-billion euro industry is being discussed.

It’s a dark, cold and windy night – not the ideal time to prise people off their sofas – so the string of cars fighting for space on the foothpath and grass verges outside tells its own story.

This is the kind of night the hosts relish. Renewable electricity is their business, wind is their raw material and the cold and dark are when people want their product most.

There is a price to be paid for this arrangement beyond utility bills, however.

A kilometre as the crow flies from the community centre is the beach and beyond that the sea, the horizon and a sense, if not always the reality, of wide, open space untouched by human hand.

The Norwegian-French consortium hosting tonight’s information session wants to insert into this seascape up to 100 wind turbines.
At full stretch with blades pointed skyward, they will reach a height of 320 metres, two and a half times taller than Dublin’s Spire.
This proposal, the Codling Wind Park, is one of six offshore wind projects that have scaled the first procedural hurdle in the route to getting planning permission. Around 20 others are at concept or preliminary investigation stage. The six frontrunners, some of which have been proposed in one form or other for over 20 years, were awarded MACs (Marine Area Consents) last December, certifying them as having passed preliminary checks on technical feasibility and financial viability. Five are along the east coast, off counties Louth, Meath, Dublin, Wicklow and north Co Wexford, and one is off Co Galway. They are also in proximity to the most densely populated parts of the country. Three are currently engaged in a fresh round of public consultation – online, by appointment and through open nights in function rooms and community centres such as the one in Kilcoole, Co Wicklow where Codling began their campaign.

With more than 300 onshore wind farms in Ireland (almost 400 on the whole island), six more projects sound almost insignificant but the offshore versions are many times bigger in height and spread. They are also in proximity to the most densely populated parts of the country. There will be more eyes on them and, for the developers, more hearts and minds to win over. And, unlike onshore wind farms which are mostly on private sites leased from farmers (some are on Coillte and Bord na Mona lands), these will be on sandbanks, seabed and waters that belong to everyone.

At the Kilcoole consultation there are a wide range of reactions. One man is reassured to learn that the turbines would be a minimum of 13km from shore, not in against the beach where he swims year-round. Another is dismayed to discover that, even 13km away, he will still be able to see them from land. Some people are pleasantly surprised to learn there will be a community benefit fund set up to distribute millions of euros in grants to local initiatives over the lifetime of the project. One woman says the fund is simply a bribe.

The planned new turbines

Peter Lefroy, project director with the Dublin Array, a 50-turbine wind farm proposed by German energy firm RWE for the Kish and Bray Banks off North Wicklow and South Dublin, says the response to its public consultations is similarly wide-ranging.

The one question he hardly ever gets asked is why? “Even with people who don’t like this specific project, there is a general acceptance that offshore wind is coming and they understand why,” he says. Just in case, the why is the climate crisis and the need to rapidly end the use of fossil fuels. Under the Climate Action Plan, 80pc of the country’s electricity must come from renewable sources by 2030.

The 4.5 gigawatts (GW) of onshore wind currently installed supplies around 30pc. The plan is to increase onshore capacity to 9GW by 2030, add 8GW of solar power and achieve “at least” 5GW of offshore wind by 2030. The intention is that half the offshore capacity, 2.5GW, will come by getting at least four and possibly five of the six current front-runners into construction by 2025 or 2026. Those six projects include the Codling, proposed for a 20km stretch of sea running roughly parallel to the coast between Greystones and Wicklow.

The Dublin Array would begin slightly north of the Codling and stretch up to Dublin Bay, roughly parallel to Blackrock. The third project currently in public consultation is the Oriel, off the coast of Co Louth which is looking at 25 turbines. Between the Oriel and the Dublin Array would be the North Irish Sea Array which is proposing three ‘pods’ of 12 turbines each off the Louth, Meath and Dublin coasts. The Arklow Bank II would be an extension of the existing Arklow Bank wind farm, the country’s only existing offshore wind farm.
Tiny by today’s standards with just seven 120m turbines, it was the world’s most powerful offshore wind farm when it began operating in 2004. Arklow Bank II would add up to another 60 turbines, from south of the Codling to the northern tip of Co Wexford. A design update is awaited for the sixth project, Sceirde Rocks off Co Galway but it has proposed 20 turbines off Connemara.

Some of the arrays would be linear and some clustered, and the closest any turbines would be to land as currently proposed would be 5-6km with some arrays 10-13km at their nearest point.

Cables to carry the power ashore will have to be laid and substations to connect them to the national grid will have to built. The Codling’s cable would run on the seabed all the way up Dublin Bay to a substation at Poolbeg. The Dublin Array’s cable would come ashore more directly and then wind its way underground through residential areas of south Dublin to a substation at Carrickmines.

They want to know the effect on marine life, from the species that inhabit the seabed into which the turbines will be fixed, to the seabirds that will share the skies with rotary blades. Turbines at the outer edges of arrays would be lit at night for safety. Construction would cause some noise but once operational, the turbines are not expected to be audible on land.

But it is not just the impact on humans that interests observers. They want to know the effect on marine life, from the species that inhabit the seabed into which the turbines will be fixed, to the seabirds that will share the skies with rotary blades. Fishers worry if they and their catch will be affected.

Environmental groups are concerned that offshore projects are progressing faster than Marine Protected Area (MPA) legislation. By 2030, 30pc of Irish waters are to be designated MPAs which would have a bearing on where wind farms are located but the law to give effect to the concept is still at draft stage. Fair Seas Ireland, an alliance of heavyweight environmental NGOs, has identified the places they say warrant MPA status. Much of the east coast is included.

What if the expert group the government appoints to recommend on MPA designation agrees? An Oireachtas committee scrutinising the draft legislation heard last week that the State could end up being sued by energy firms if their projects were curtailed, or by the European Commission if the projects were not curtailed. Pádraig Fogarty of the Irish Wildlife Trust says the dilemma was predictable.
“The State has dragged its heels on this for years. If we knew where the MPAs would be, we could put the turbines everywhere else.” He also questions why the Kish and Bray Banks were identified as warranting a more specific, localised form of protection as a Special Area of Conservation more than a decade ago but designation was not followed through.

The Coastal Concern Alliance has submitted a formal complaint to the European Commission about the matter. The Department of Housing and Heritage would not provide an explanation. “The National Parks and Wildlife Service is currently in discussion with the EU Commission on this matter. As these discussions are ongoing, it would not be appropriate to comment further at this time,” it said. Pádraig Fogarty says environmentalists don’t want to be in a ‘told you so’ position. “If there is a judicial review of some decision that’s made, it will be the NGOs that will be blamed for it and yet we tried our best to point out that this is bad planning.”

For their part, the wind farm developers say they are transparent about the habitats and species in the waters they want to work in. “A lot of people ask about the impact on animals and marine life,” says Peter Lefroy. “We have a lot of information available because we have been surveying for quite a while. We have more to do and the environmental assessment at planning stage will be robust.”

Before submitting a planning application, there is another hurdle to clear. Companies seeking to add electricity to the national grid need a contract for supply. Contracts will be awarded under ORESS, the Offshore Renewable Electricity Support Scheme. It takes the form of an auction, awarding first those who can supply power at the lowest price, the next lowest and so on. The government wants to get 2.5GW of power out of this auction so realistically that means only the most expensive of the six MAC holders will be excluded.

ORESS goes live for applications in April and targets late June for the award of contracts which will typically last 20 years. Presuming they succeed at ORESS stage, several projects intend submitting planning applications before the end of this year. These will go directly to An Bord Pleanála, the planning body currently reeling from scandals, due to undergo major restructuring, buried in a massive backlog of cases and lacking the expert staff needed to assess such complex projects.

There are other obstacles ahead. Belfast is the only port on the island big enough to handle the construction and assembly of giant wind turbines and there is a waiting list for its facilities and for the other nearest capable ports in Europe.

Supply chain delays are also likely as Ireland is not the only country going big on wind energy at the moment, and skills shortages are also a looming concern. Industry body, Wind Energy Ireland, has been lobbying the government to pick up the pace on policy, legislation, resources for planning and investment in ports for years. Spokesman Justin Moran says the challenges remain significant but if the next stage – planning – goes smoothly, the other pieces of the jigsaw should start falling into place.

“The key issue at the moment is planning. If you don’t have the planners, and the marine ecologists and the legal team in An Bord Pleanála, then those projects are just going to languish in planning for a very long time,” he says. But he says developers do not want a rush job either. “Nobody wants to have things rubber-stamped. People need to have confidence in the process or it’s going to create problems down the line.”

Down the line, if government policy is realised, Ireland would not only have a realistic pathway to 100pc renewable electricity from domestic sources in place by 2030 but would also be on course to become an exporter of power. The six priority projects are bottom-fixed – their turbines would be fixed to the seabed – but the next generation are expected to use floating turbines that would allow projects to be located much further offshore, particularly around the west coast where the strength and consistency of wind is better.

In the meantime, though, the business of explaining the current projects goes on. Gerry Walsh, a county councillor living in Greystones who attended the Kilcoole consultation, says public feedback to him so far has been largely positive or neutral. “People are probably only starting to sit up and take notice that this is happening,” he says. “They’re still unsure what this will look like and will all the wind farms be joined up or will there be breaks between them.

“I don’t think many even know about the community benefit fund and there will be a lot of money there that has to be properly managed [by regulation an average offshore wind farm will contribute around €60m to the locality]. “What I don’t want is for any of this to become divisive. We saw what happened in Mayo a number of years ago with the Corrib Gas.“That’s why it’s important to have transparency and communication and that companies mitigate the issues of concern to people.

“It’s not going to be perfect but it’s about making the best of it. I don’t think we have a choice – we have to move away from fossil fuels.”