RE: PRD29 Sep 2022 12:29
A fabulous debate…. Of which I’m half way through.
A snippet shown below.
Deputy Michael McNamara
“ I have listened to what the Government has to say about this matter and in particular to the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, who is the Minister in the Department tasked with this. There is great hope for the offshore wind energy sector and he has considerable ambitions in that regard. I would never fault anybody for having hope or ambition but they have to be tempered a little bit by reality. Notwithstanding all the talk that we will be net exporters of wind energy, we have to bear in mind that in 2020, when this Government came to power, 35% of the energy generated in the State was generated by wind. Last year, that fell to 29%. The reality belies the words that are being floated about.
We are told that offshore wind is this great panacea, but I would like to refer to Equinor, the Norwegian state company formally known as Statoil, is almost the biggest player and is certainly at the cutting edge of floating turbines. They are the only ones I am aware of who have developed floating turbines. To harness the wind energy off the Atlantic, the turbines will have to be floating, because offshore turbines need to be either anchored or floating. They will be anchored in the Irish Sea but will have to be floating in the Atlantic. However, Equinor has pulled out. There had been a huge announcement, and I was delighted with what was going to happen at Moneypoint, but the company pulled out a couple of months later. The company did not cite anything, but industry sources said it was because the company was baffled by the lack of planning and regulatory reform and the lack of any real capability or possibility of developing this sector in Ireland.”
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