Mr. Pat Keating:

I would like to thank the committee for inviting me to present today to discuss accelerating and achieving the full potential of Ireland’s offshore wind resource, supply chain logistics development and green hydrogen, with a view to providing Ireland’s needs but also contributing to the European and global demand for clean energy.

Shannon Foynes is Ireland’s largest bulk port company and has statutory jurisdiction on the lower Shannon Estuary covering 500 sq. km. With channel depths of up to 32 m, it handles the largest vessels entering Irish waters and has capacity to handle more than 11 million tonnes per annum. Its activities have a trade value of €8.5 billion per annum supporting 3,900 jobs. It is noteworthy that both EU and national policies, including the national development plan, endorse the strategic importance of Shannon Foynes Port Company. Shannon Foynes is a tier 1 port of national strategic importance under national ports policy. In addition, under the EU’s TEN-T guidelines, two of its core corridors, the Atlantic and the North Sea Alpine, have been extended to include Shannon Foynes. To date, Shannon Foynes has made several funding applications under the TEN-T funding budget, known as the Connecting Europe Facility, receiving grant aid of around €10 million supporting studies and works of more than €40 million. Importantly, the Shannon Estuary has a number of sites, extending to a total of 1,200 ha., adjoining deepwater zoned for maritime development, making it ideally suited for future national port infrastructure of scale for this country.

To fully realise these comparative advantages, expansion and development of the port is led by its 30-year master plan, Vision 2041. We are currently updating Vision 2041 to holistically plan for the future port infrastructure required to support Atlantic offshore renewable energy, ORE.

Shannon Foynes has identified the following core growth areas in our strategic plans: establishing the Shannon Estuary as an ORE hub for supply chain location for floating offshore wind; facilitating alternative fuel trans-shipment and production of hydrogen and ammonia, for example, on the Shannon Estuary; establishing a logistics hub and global trans-shipment facility at Foynes for intermodal or unitised cargoes or both; organic growth; and implementing the Limerick docklands strategy.

The first two core areas are relevant to today’s meeting and, accordingly, this presentation will focus on those areas. Due to our proximity to the Atlantic wind resources, considered the best in Europe, and quantified at up to 80 GW, our objective is to develop the Shannon Estuary as a marshalling and operations and maintenance port. Large-scale port infrastructure, together with associated supply chain infrastructure, is required if Ireland, and indeed Europe, is to meet its climate action targets by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. The scale of industrialisation required to achieve this goal should not be underestimated. For example, commentators estimate that more than €100 billion of floating wind farm investment could be accommodated in our exclusive economic zone, EEZ, over the short, medium and long term. To enable this potential offshore investment of €100 billion, Shannon Foynes commissioned a report that found €12 billion in supply chain investment will locate in its harbour, the Shannon Estuary, by 2050.

To facilitate this investment, our plans include the development of an ORE assembly and marshalling facility at a new Foynes deepwater terminal. It is estimated to cost €350 million and to be completed by 2028, thereby enabling the deployment of floating wind projects by the end of this decade. Allied to the ESB’s ambitions for Moneypoint, this will mean two large-scale facilities will be fully operational in the Shannon Estuary by 2030. The update of our master plan, Vision 2041, will be completed by quarter 3 of this year, and it covers the entire Shannon Estuary. This update will provide a collaborative roadmap of the ORE requirements for the duration of the plan. Encompassed in the plan as well is identification of port connectivity requirements for the ORE industry, including the completion of the Limerick to Foynes road scheme, the reopening of the Foynes to Limerick rail line to connect the port with the national rail network, consistent with Irish Rail’s Rail Freight 2040 Strategy, the upgrading of fibre-optic connectivity to support large-scale supply chain requirements, and the identification of offshore grid connectivity points in the Shannon Estuary. An enterprise hub at Shannon Foynes for the co-location of the ORE supply chain on the Shannon Estuary is also included in the plan, as is an educational cluster to support an industry-led research and development working group, and a curriculum working group, facilitated by the universities. This cluster will focus on developing the next generation of talent and skills for the sector within the Shannon Estuary. Relevant stakeholder engagements will also form part of the plan.

Considering the distinct competitive advantage of Ireland’s Atlantic floating wind resources, Ireland has the potential to produce significant amounts of green hydrogen. Now more than ever, there is a case for Ireland to increase its floating offshore wind ambition and to accelerate a green hydrogen industry to support national climate action objectives. Ireland needs to act fast to ensure the potential is captured, and the Shannon Foynes Port Company believes supporting floating wind as part of the phase 2 designation process is critical to this.

Shannon Foynes is implementing its plans to support the growth of floating offshore wind and green hydrogen production and understands from the sector that it is imperative the scope of phase 2 is broadened beyond grid-connected offshore wind; that at least 10 GW should be reserved for a competitive floating preference category in the marine area consent, MAC, process; that the route to market is progressing fast for green hydrogen and alternative fuels derived from floating offshore wind; that Ireland needs to act fast to ensure the hydrogen and alternative fuel export opportunity is realised, and the prioritisation of a hydrogen strategy for Ireland is central to this; and that financing avenues for ORE-related port infrastructure could and should be refined further.

I thank the committee.