Farmers’ group calls for development of onshore wind farms

Onshore wind is being forgotten about by the Government in the transition to renewable energy, a farmer-led industry group has claimed.

The Irish Wind Farmers Association (IWFA) said planning in Ireland was “not fit for purpose” when it came to facilitating the development of onshore wind, adding “locally-owned community and farmer-owned wind projects can play a pivotal role in reaching the 2030 targets”.

According to the European Commission’s state of the energy report for the EU in 2023, Ireland had just 12% of its energy from renewables in 2021.

Fossil fuels make up most of Ireland’s energy mix, the commission said, with oil accounting for 48% of energy consumption, followed by natural gas at 31%.

Ireland’s high dependence on imported fossil fuels makes the economy “particularly sensitive” to global price developments, “requiring it to step up efforts on the energy transition”, the commission’s report said.

Ireland is one of the worst performers in the EU when it comes to renewable energy share, according to data from the commission’s data analysis wing Eurostat, along with the Netherlands, Malta, and Luxembourg.

The IWFA, which represents almost 100 farmers and landowners, claimed the Government has shifted its focus from onshore to offshore wind in recent years, with planning intricacies the leading culprit.

Analysis from the European Climate Foundation in 2022 found Ireland is the third most difficult country across Europe when it comes to wind energy development.

IWFA executive member and CEO of South East Energy Agency Paddy Phelan, said: “Planning in this country is not fit for purpose. It is seen across the housing sector where projects are having objections raised daily to prevent NIMBYism. The same can be said for land-based wind energy sector.

As we continue to miss housing targets and see the same issue, we are now destined to see renewable energy targets missed by half if we are reliant on offshore wind being operational before 2030.”
Offshore wind will contribute significantly to 2040 and 2050 targets, but in IWFA members’ opinions, not 2030 ones, Mr Phelan claimed.

Keynote speaker at the IWFA’s upcoming annual conference in Kilkenny, University College Cork energy expert Dr Paul Deane said the system was part of the problem.

“We need to move the roadblocks off our road to deliver renewable energy in Ireland. The pieces of the puzzle are all there but we are not doing the jigsaw right. We can get this done but we are missing great opportunities,” he said.

The cost of our dependence on fossil fuels is the high prices we pay for energy, but we can choose to change this.
“Over the next two decades, we can produce most of our energy needs from clean, weather-driven renewables like wind and solar in Ireland. It will be affordable. It will be clean. And it will be ours,” the senior research fellow at MaREI, the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) research centre for energy, climate, and marine at UCC, said.

The IWFA claimed it was “high time” Environment Minister Eamon Ryan “paid more attention to onshore and less to offshore”, saying there is “great opportunity for community development throughout the country, working alongside offshore”, but only with “immediate attention from the Government”.