Floating offshore wind strategy
Deputy Carroll MacNeill asked how the Department would speed up floating offshore wind and balance it with biodiversity concerns. The Minister said offshore wind was a major national opportunity and the first projects would begin moving through the process shortly.
I fully agree with the reply of the Minister, Deputy Ryan, to Deputy Durkan on energy security. What steps have his Department now taken to expedite this strategy for floating offshore wind and to bring the reality of that sooner? The legislation on maritime planning has passed. There is an opportunity for offshore fixed wind in my own constituency in Dún Laoghaire. I want to be clear that I support that for a whole range of different reasons but, primarily, for energy security and for the climate. There is also a tension about biodiversity and questions are being asked about that. Would the Minister like to comment on that?
Comment on this
The development of renewable offshore wind is the huge potential development for our country. It is Ardnacrusha to the power of ten in its significance, scale and importance. It will start in the coming days and in a short number of weeks. We will start the process of what is known as the relevant projects. These are the projects that have been in planning for over ten years by getting foreshore licences and other planning systems in place. They are largely on the east coast. There is one in the west. There is one in Dublin waters. That action process will kick in in the latter part of this year. That is phase one of this development.
Phase two will follow shortly afterwards. We will go further to southern and western waters where we will start to look at how we can develop the likes of hydrogen supplies on the back of this. Phase three is the big one. All this has to be delivered, in my mind, within the lifetime of this Government. This includes the contracts and the completion of those auction processes.
Phase three is the plan for the future energy and economy of this country. We will tap into our sea area, which is ten times larger than our land area, particularly to the north and west. We will get something like 30 GW, which is six or seven times the amount of power we are using at the moment, as the founding stone of our economy. This Government has to deliver all three phases in the next three years.
