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THE IRISH STATE’S investment fund has committed €35 million to a new wind energy project that will build multiple wind farms across the country.
NTR, formerly one of Ireland’s largest publicly listed companies, announced today that it secured €250 million in equity for a new investment vehicle called NTR Wind 1 that will build onshore wind farms in Ireland and the UK.
The most recent investors in the fund are the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF), which has pledged €35 million, and the Strathclyde Pension Fund, one of the largest pension funds in the UK, which has committed €50 million.
ISIF was established to invest the €7 billion remaining in the National Pension Reserve Fund (NPRF), after the NPRF’s €20 billion in assets were used during the crash to help the State keep afloat.
The new fund from NTR is set to use the €250 million committed to the project to raise a further €420 million of debt to build wind farms with a combined capacity of 270 megawatts (MW) across Ireland and the UK.
The Irish Wind Energy Association estimates that 1MW of wind energy can provide enough electricity to supply approximately about 650 homes.
Legal and General Capital, the investment arm of FTSE 100 firm Legal and General Group, has committed just under half of the funding for NTR Wind 1. NTR has also committed €50 million of its own equity to the new fund.
Irish investment
About €80 million of the total equity will be invested in the Irish Single Electricity Market, the wholesale electricity market operating in Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Speaking to TheJournal.ie McGuckian declined to reveal the exact number of farms NTR will build in the Republic, however she said construction will soon start on the fund’s first wind farm in the Republic.
“We have a 10MW project based in Meath. It’s not under construction yet but we would hope to be building there by the end of the year,” she said,
We are targeting a minimum investment of €80 million in the Irish Single Electricity Market (and) if we get more opportunities to invest after that we may.”
She said between €200 million and €250 million of debt will be raised for the Irish projects, adding that debt will be raised on a project-by-project basis.
ISIF, which is managed and controlled by the National Treasury Management Agency, praised the project. ISIF fund director Eugene O’Callaghan said the organisation was attracted to the fund because of “NTR’s business plan, management team and Irish pipeline”.
In November, NTR, which was one of Ireland’s best-known public companies, demerged its wind energy business and transferred its remaining investments to a new holding company.
Although keeping the name NTR, its business model has dramatically changed. Whereas it once owned assets including the Westlink Toll Bridge, recycling firm Greenstar, and a chunk of wind energy firm Airtricity it is now focused on developing investment vehicles for renewable energy projects.
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Wait till they look for planning, the objections will eat into there costs
€35million is nothing when it comes to wind farms. It works out at roughly €1million per megawatt and if the turbine is a 3 megawatt turbine then €35million will only be you roughly 11 turbines. That’s not even the size of a medium size wind farm.
This is one giant scam entirely dependent on subsidies.
The public don’t want these monstrosities destroying the environment.
Not to mention the destruction of people’s lives.
The Wind Energy industry is being subsidized by the Irish taxpayer to the tune of millions of euros.
No real value for money, its only purpose to avoid EC penalties.
We need a similar protest movement to the water protest to stop this madness in its tracks.
Cheers.
That’s mad.
Billions of euros spent on subsidies and the end result:
2.8% wind and solar contribution.
Better stop this scam before it starts here.
Solar is actually viable here these days. It’s going to be a game changer alright and it’s way more effecient than biofuels.
Solar ? In Ireland ? You must be coddin’
Ireland has really windy wind and these large fans will make it even more windier. We should sell this wind to other countries so they can use it to turn their fans. Major profit.
That’s one hell of a windy wind up!!!!!
The govt will probably give the wind away to a foreign company and charge us for hanging our washing out on the line.
Giant scam.
They should put them in oceans and seas to be fair.
@Peter
Out to sea.
50%more electricity produced but 300%more costly
if they really cared, we’d all get a grant to install a wee one in all our gardens! biggest so called green scam going, all they do is line the pockets of already inflated pockets! nothing but bird and bat choppers. green energy me h#le.
wee ones are very inefficient. The output of a turbine is proportional to the square of the of blade length.
A friend of mine has one on their land and they make enough energy to cover their own electric at home and sell back to esb. It’s not a massive one.
Except you can’t sell back to the esb they stopped that in its tracks
More corruption. €35 million. To friends.
What a waste of Money.
The anti wind energy lobby will have a blue fit over this. Or that should be a green fit?
You should apply to get one put in your garden
@Nolan – …and so they should. The great wind farm scam continues…
How wind has driven up energy prices in Germany through taxpayer subsidies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClHUtlZgtVg
your right dude, lets burn more coal. We’ll build a new station 5 km upwind from you.
We currently burn 7000 tonnes of coal daily in Moneypoint. That will not change regardless of any amount of turbines that are built. Turbines need permanent back up due to unreliability, this is called spinning reserve, and the main reason the country folk are against them. They have done their research and see the wind scam for what it is.
Ireland already has 20% wind in our system which is the 3rd highest in Europe. We have 1400 wind turbines in approx 200 wind farms and they have reduced our Co2 and fuel imports by a tiny 2 to 3 %. This meaningless saving has come at the expense of enormous damage to our landscape, our environment and our rural communities. Ireland has 3rd highest EU electricity prices.
This plan to build enormous amounts of wind mysteriously sidestepped mandatory requirements under our national spending code, and under European law. It should have a detailed and robust cost benefit analysis (CBA) and a strategic environmental assessment (SEA) – it has neither.
But hey, keep just banging on about how the nimbys are against it and we need to do something about CO2. You will soon he hearing the term fuel poverty a lot. And CO2 levels will still be unaffected, but the wind developers will be laughing all the way to the bank with their subsidies that we are coughing up.
Ireland needs an open and evidence based debate on energy. And not what we have now, which is developers and their lobby too close to government. We all know how that usually plays out.
@Matty – Let’s put a few wind turbines next to your house and add another levy to your electricity bill to pay for it. Then – your tune will change quick enough!
Correction….Matty I should have written …Your ‘ill Informed’ tune…!
What’s in it for me ?
Hugh! Now there’s a man who can rationalize the problem!
Wind power is a scam, Goverments have to keep up the green appearance, while big companies rake in the subsidies.
Greenpeace has done huge damage to the environment, with fake science and scaremongery.
Hi Dude, nice to quote German studies where wind increased costs, instead of Irish studies where wind reduced the costs. From 2011 to 2013 wind was either the lowest or second lowest cost generation technology in Ireland.
@Alan – What do you think the levies and cost increases on your Irish electricity bills in recent years were for?
Hi Dude, the small PSO levy supports Peat, wind and gas generation plants. When you add up all the income per KWh, wind generation was clearly cheaper than the average from 2011 to 2013. Just look at the smartgriddashboard today and you see high wind and low energy prices. Alan.
Hugh, are you deliberately trying to mislead with your random stats? 20% wind reduces carbon in electricity by 18%+. Cheap coal prices and subsidised Peat generation increased carbon output by lots at the same time. Are you blaming the wind for the power companies burning coal instead of gas? Alan.
Rock on, Hugh :-)
wind energy is incapable of replacing coal
keep buying the hype and spin you brainwashed fool
Should have been done years ago.
Coillte semi state investing millions of taxpayers money also in wind farm on state forester land ?
Making someone money
Can someone with a brain in the government ranks please research the amount of energy or carbon footprint it takes to make one of these turbines. These wind farms are a giant scam and are passed off as green energy which they are not, you have less of a carbon footprint by burning coal.
Myself, all the research has been done and onshore wind in Ireland is a cheap option with the lowest carbon footprint. We had close to 40% of electricity generation from renewables in December with low wholesale prices. Alan.
The system can only accomodate 35% wind energy so stop codding people. This expensive unreliable nonsense produced little or no power during the coldest nights of the winter that occurred last week
3.5% electricity generated from wind on the coldest day of the winter
Is this going to be Eircodes 2 ???
At best, they work 25, maybe 30% of the time. The problem is how to generate the other 70%, without dumping CO2 waste into our environment. There is an answer!
Nuclear is one answer, and storage via electric cars is another…
@Buster – CO2 is NOT waste. It is a normal, natural gas, upon which all life on this planet depends and needs.
@The Dude, that is when it’s not being produced in the vast amounts that contribute to global warming.
life needs cadium, cobalt, magnesium etc as well. but just try eating too much of these things.
Nuclear is the future but people are scared of it. The reality is that it is very safe.
@Critical – There is NO Global Warming – regardless of how many times you lot repeat that lie.
dude, You blind?
Quick… plug the car in, wind is blowing!
Damn. Unplug the kettle. The wind has dropped.
Wind power is a useless waste of money.
To all those who disagree. Where does our electricity come from when the wind does not blow?
Old Gordon,
Buster, in December Ireland’s clever engineers managed to deliver reliable electricity with 39% of it being renewable (mainly wind). Wind needs other technologies as well, but we should be economically able to get to 70%+ of our electricity coming from wind (based on current plans). Alan.
So, in December 39% came from wind. That is good.
Where did the other 61% come from?
Can you share with me the current plans for 70%+ … i would be interested.
A judge had no problem last week overturning a decision on a wind farm which had been granted planning in Cork.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/high-court-overturns-permission-for-cork-wind-farm-1.2548339
Judges here have no problem handing down suspended sentences in serious sexual and violent assault cases.
You could nearly buy a pebble bed nuclear reactor off the Chinese for that much
Just plug the ar*es of some lads who’ve been on the Guinness all-night followed by a taco Kebab into the turbines and you’ll have all the power you’d ever need…..
For information purposes the buffer between a house and a wind turbine in France England and Germany is 1.5 km , in Ireland we set that back to a grand 500 m . By doing so we expose people to huge amount of vibrations, noise and shadow flickers . By the way we re cutting down forests to install that “green” energy lol go figure
With a bit of luck they’ll act like an engine and we’ll travel the world
Where’s the Finglas shooting story gone?
Its there below the passport one, on android app anyway
Where’s the Dublin shooting story gone?
Gone KABOOM!!
Note energy was not even mentioned in the election campaign. The one thing that unites Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Labour, Sinn Fein and the Greens is an unshakable belief that the country must throw everything it has into renewable energy, particularly wind energy. It is the sacred cow. Notwithstanding that economist Colm McCarthy has pointed out that there is already overcapacity. If a new national fund is set up to replace the depleted National Pension Reserve fund, they will plough all of it in to wind farms. Future pensioners will pay for their pensions by higher electricity bills. Round and round it will go.
rampant profiteering in the Irish energy sector with the expressed support of the sacked Government. The ESB posted nearly 1,000,000 euro a day profit for 2014/2015. The have so much money they are planning to spend 150,000,000 euro refurnishing their Fitzwilliam St offices. This should be stopped immediately and the PSO levy scrapped.
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