Paul Deane: The vision of Ireland being an exporter of energy is several decades away

Our offshore resource is indeed large but the options to get it to markets are challenging because of the rugged nature and remote location of the potential wind-harnessing sites off the west coast

An artist’s impression of a floating wind farm off the Co Clare coast

Understanding the future of energy systems is extremely challenging. Energy analysts use complex methods to determine the most likely mix of future fuels, but policy makers will often seek out simpler narratives to win public support. These narratives are significant because they can create a collective expectation of the future which can generate policy pull towards that vision.

The role of floating offshore wind in Ireland is a case in point. Our Shared Future, or the programme for government, established an ambition for five gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind energy by 2030 with the potential for “at least 30 GW of offshore floating wind power”. The narrative has become more politically compelling due to the recent energy crisis across Europe.

Ireland’s offshore resource is indeed large but the options to get it to useful markets are challenging and amplified both economically and technically because of the rugged nature and remote location of the resource off the west coast.

To put the ambition in context, 30GW is similar to the current power system of the Netherlands and would meet 2 per cent of future EU electricity needs, but building a floating power system of that size in the Atlantic, hundreds of kilometres from the main European demand centres, would need several environmental and engineering problems to be overcome.

Exporting that much power from the Atlantic through electricity cables is not credible because of engineering and electrical challenges, although a lower figure may be plausible, and studies are needed to quantify this.

Across Europe, offshore wind is expected to play an important role in the future energy mix with European Commission studies showing the requirement for about 400GW of offshore wind in 2050. This is assumed to be fixed bottom rather than floating.

But floating wind farms will have to compete with other renewables which are also reducing in costs, and in particular solar PV which benefits to a much greater degree from the reduction in battery costs because of technical complementarity in matching cycles of solar generation with storage.

From a wide regional perspective, electrical interconnectors benefit offshore wind when it comes to integration into large power systems, but can be costly and challenging to build.

It is unlikely that the west of Ireland’s offshore resource will be able to compete on a cost-based approach with other renewable options, so to have the greatest chance of success a value-based approach is needed.

The highest value for renewable energy is in reducing emissions in cases where the traditional use of electricity cannot. This is likely to be in heavy industry, shipping, aviation, and heavy transport rather than homes and businesses.

Several Irish universities are investigating ways to convert electricity to other energy forms such as hydrogen and ammonia which are more suitable for storage and export around the globe, and this will be key to developing an industry here.

The delivery of energy and fuel to these markets today tends to be through ports and ships rather than wires and cables, and this plays to an advantage of Ireland’s west coast. Whereas cables and wires tie you to markets, ports and ships give options and flexibility, but these markets must be sought out and nurtured before any significant development can be successful.

The phrase “Saudi Arabia of wind” is frequently used to describe the potential for Ireland to export electricity to other countries and while this is an overstatement, a more relevant comparison is with the development of the North Sea oil and gas by Britain and Norway in the 1970s.

Both took different approaches to developing and exploiting the resource with Norway advocating much stronger state involvement.

Like Ireland’s Atlantic coast, the resource was expensive and technically challenging to extract but success was achieved due to a mix of stable policy, sustained government support, and partnership with industry both for development but also for off-take contracts which are needed to justify supply. These measures together de-risked the investments needed.

It must also be considered when promoting the ambition of “energy for export” projects that the climate benefits or emissions reduction is attributed to the country importing the clean energy rather than the one exporting it. In this regard, Ireland will need to justify these developments on a purely economic rather than a national climate basis.

But above all, expectations for such ambitious projects must be managed carefully. Long-term optimism can blind us to near-term problems. Last week, Wind Energy Ireland highlighted regulatory and policy issues with achieving the near-term targets of five GW of offshore wind which is mainly expected to be on the less harsh east coast.

The vision of Ireland being an exporter of energy is several decades away and in the short-term must not become a distraction to the many immediate challenges facing our energy system at home.

Dr Paul Deane is a research fellow at the MaREI Centre for Marine and Renewable Energy and the Environmental Research Institute (ERI) at UCC