Update on Ireland´s Offshore Renewable Energy Sector

09/05/2023

Dear Atlantic Strategy colleagues,

Last week, Ireland took another important step on its journey to creating the conditions for a thriving Offshore Renewable Energy sector.

Under the Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (ORESS 1), Minister Eamon Ryan (our Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications) released provisional results on the first offshore wind auction. According to the results, Ireland awarded contracts to four offshore wind projects with the potential to produce over 3 GW (gigawatts) of capacity. According to Reuters, The contracts were awarded to a 1.3 gigawatts joint venture between EDF Renewables (EDF.PA) and Fred Olsen Seawind, an 824 megawatt RWE (RWEG.DE) project and 500 and 450 megawatt farms led respectively by Norway's Statkraft and Corio Generation, which is part of Macquarie's (MQG.AX) Green Investment Group.

  • The scheme involves securing the competitive price at an average of €86.05/MWh, which is one of the lowest prices paid by an emerging offshore wind market in the world. For comparison, the average wholesale electricity price in Ireland over the past 12 months was in excess of €200/MWh. It is expected that this price will save Irish electricity consumers hundreds of millions of euros per year.
  • This is the largest volume of renewable energy Ireland has ever procured at auction — equivalent to over a third of Ireland’s entire electricity consumption this year and it is also enough to power over 2.5 million Irish homes with clean electricity and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by over 1 million tonnes in 2030.

The results are subject to the normal RESS confirmation and State Aid processes, both of which are expected to be complete by mid-June.

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