Green power cable developer warns of bottleneck in approval of clean energy projects

Boss of €500 million Greenlink Interconnector to Britain says state agencies urgently need help to process a huge number of renewables projects that are in the pipeline

James O’Reilly, chief executive of Greenlink: ‘Our energy system is about to get a lot more complex.’ Picture: Bryan Meade

State agencies desperately need more resources to process the volume of renewable energy projects coming down the tracks, the head of the Greenlink Interconnector has said.

James O’Reilly, chief executive of Greenlink, said the government needs to prioritise additional funding for key agencies such as Eirgrid, An Bord Pleanála and the Commission for Regulation of Utilities if Ireland is to hit its renewable energy targets.

“Eirgrid has done fantastic work to get the amount of wind penetration we have on the power grid today. We’re the highest in the world. But our energy system is about to get a lot more complex. We’re going to need a ‘smart grid’ in the future to handle the intermittency of wind and solar,” O’Reilly told the Business Post.