Eamon Ryan insists that Ireland’s move towards offshore wind energy will see our energy bills fall.
The Environment and Energy Minister was speaking after the announcement that four offshore windfarms have successfully bid in an auction to supply electricity to the mainland. He said that the developments would have a "significant impact" on household energy costs, which translates to cheaper bills.
Mr Ryan also said that we could hope to see the benefits start to accrue from as soon as 2026, when the offshore energy from the newly-approved projects start to hit the grid. Speaking on RTE’s Today with Claire Byrne Show on Thursday, Mr Ryan said: "That low cost that today could provide about a third of our power is very significant.
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"But it’s also significant in the sense that we’re going to go further. We will start a second auction later this year and we will go on with the same next year and as we start to head into southern waters and into western waters, the scale here is beyond compare.
"Firstly, to meet our own needs, and that lower cost is important because it is affordable to Irish consumers. But then also so that we can use that power to create new industry and new jobs and export some of the excess power we will have."
Mr Ryan was enthusiastic about the future potential for wind power in Ireland and off our windy coastline. He added: "The scale of the resource is huge.
"There are sea areas seven times our land area, it’s one of the windiest places on our planet and as the windspeeds go up, every percentage point you go up in the windspeeds, you actually see a huge increase in productivity of these turbines. So what we can expect now, this is a very significant vote of confidence, a statement of confidence in the country, we know we have a power supply that we can turn to, that can be affordable, that is clean and that is secure."
There will be a total of four offshore windfarms located at various locations off both Ireland’s east and west coasts. The investment will cost in the region of €9 billion and will see a network of huge wind generators built into the seabed, some as high as 300 metres.
In the meantime, before the massive windfarms come online, Mr Ryan promised that the Government would be "keeping up the pressure" on energy companies to provide value, competitively-priced electricity to consumers.
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