Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 1 March 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Energy - Ambition and Challenges: Discussion

Mr. Paul Lennon:

A number of points about the supply chain have been touched on, including where we see the opportunities at the moment on the environmental, planning and engineering side, including longer term ports and operation and maintenance. As I mentioned, the real game-changer for a supply chain and Ireland being able to tap into a resource base is floating offshore wind and the foundation structures. The question about the upper limit of the ambition is a very good one. By way of comparison, in January of this year Scotland awarded about 26 GW of fixed and floating offshore wind in seabed option agreements. That puts into perspective how we see Scotland. I absolutely agree that, in the short term, in Ireland, as Mr. Dollard mentioned, it is a matter of getting to 5 GW. We should go beyond that, however, because the world will not end in 2030 and we have a huge opportunity that we can realise off the west coast and the south coast.

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