IRELAND LIKES TO be big and bold when it comes to future plans – among the biggest and boldest are the government’s hopes for offshore wind.

Many experts have said that Ireland has the potential to become the ‘Saudi Arabia of offshore wind’.

The government’s incredibly ambitious plans reflect that goal.

Ireland’s recently published offshore ‘future framework’ document set out big targets – 5GW (gigawatts) of offshore wind installed by 2030, rising sharply to 20GW by 2040 and then 37GW by 2040.

To put these numbers into context – there is currently about 5GW of onshore wind farms installed across Ireland, which supply about one-third of Ireland’s electricity.

As offshore wind farms are normally more efficient than onshore – due to a variety of reasons such as higher wind speeds at sea – 20GW of offshore wind would likely meet most of Ireland’s electricity needs.

37GW would mean the country would probably be able to export large amounts of power, giving the state a new avenue to generate money while also being a sustainable way to keep the lights on amidst the move away from fossil fuels.

It all sounds great on paper – now it just has to happen in the real world.

As can often be the case, high-level government targets and reality often make uncomfortable bedfellows.

And what is certain now is that the target to have 5GW installed by 2030 will be missed.

The failure to hit this target could then have a knock-on impact, causing the 2040 and 2050 goals to drift as well, putting the ultimate vision of the ‘Saudi Arabia’ of offshore wind in danger.

But it’s only 2024 – how can we already say with so much confidence that the 2030 target will be missed?

The key reason – the timelines for state auctions which will decide where new wind farms go have already drifted too far off track.

The developments planned off the Irish coast are enormous infrastructure projects, which take about 10 years to deliver from start (identifying a site) to finish (completed construction and generating electricity).

As of now, there are currently only six offshore wind farms which have a chance of being finished by the end of the decade.

These are the ones which took part in Ireland’s first offshore wind auction last year, called ORESS 1.

Companies were bidding for contracts whereby the state would guarantee a price for the electricity produced by their wind farms, something extremely valuable for a developer which will sink hundreds of millions of euros into a project.

Six projects bid for government contracts, with four winning. These four have a combined electricity generation capacity of 3.1GW.

The two which were unsuccessful have a combined capacity of just under 1.2GW.

All six projects, which have a combined capacity of just under 4.3GW, are moving ahead with the planning process.

It is currently expected the first of these projects will be delivered in 2029.

But after ORESS 1, the government decided to move to a ‘plan-led’ approach for future offshore wind auctions.

Under ORESS 1, developers applied using sites they had picked to develop themselves.

With the new ‘plan-led’ approach, Ireland has now moved to a system where the government instead decides where new offshore wind farms get built.

In theory, this is a good thing. For example, one advantage is it allows better management of the state’s electricity grid, as there are certain areas where there is not enough grid capacity to handle taking the electricity from multiple offshore wind farms.

So the new approach would allow Ireland to better plan – the government picks the sites, the developers bid for the contract to build an offshore wind farm there, and things should proceed smoothly from there.

The first offshore wind farm to be delivered under this new system will be under an auction called ORESS 2.1.

It will see companies bid for the rights to develop a single 900MW offshore wind farm located off the southwest coast.

But legislation needed for the move to the ‘plan-led approach’ has taken longer than anticipated to pass through the Oireachtas.

As recently as July 2023, the government aimed to hold ORESS 2.1 “before the end of 2023, with final results in early 2024”.

Now, it has been flagged that the auction may not be held until the middle of 2025. Results will come a few months later, with a planning application possibly not submitted until mid-2026.

The most optimistic timeline for an offshore wind farm once a planning application has been submitted is about two years to get through the planning system, and then three to actually build the project.

Normally some leeway is also needed – for example, already some of the ORESS 1 developers have looked for an extra six months to prepare planning applications.

This is without even touching on the legal challenges many wind farms are subject to, which often end up delaying projects for years.

The result is that on this timeline, the ORESS 1 projects, which are due to submit planning applications by the end of 2024, will likely just about sneak in by the end of 2030.

But with the ORESS 2.1 auction being pushed back by up to a year and a half, it is now set to miss that window.

This means just the six ORESS 1 bidders with a combined 4.3GW capacity can be completed by 2030.

But here too, there are problems.

The initial deadline to file planning applications was June 2024. Of the four successful projects, three asked for extensions to submit their applications.

And the two unsuccessful projects still have to make sure they find someone who will buy the electricity produced by their wind farms.

While the developers have said they are confident of signing deals with large companies which want the power, these agreements have not yet materialised.

More generally, offshore wind developers are also increasingly struggling to deliver projects amid issues such as inflation and high interest rates.

The ORESS 2.1 delay will also have a knock-on impact on developing further offshore wind in Ireland.

It had been expected that an ORESS 2.2 auction, for the contract to build a wind farm located off the east coast, would be held “later in 2024”. Instead, with ORESS 2.1 being held in 2025, ORESS 2.2 is more probable in 2026.

Not only do these delays mean the 2030 target is out of reach – they also mean the later goals start to slip away.

The 2040 and 2050 targets were always stretch goals, and the government may be taking the ‘shoot for the moon, land in the stars’ approach.

But with delays already beginning to pile up at the earliest stage of the plan, more urgency is needed if Ireland wants to come close to realising its offshore vision.