Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 14 February 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

General Scheme of the Planning and Development Bill 2022: Discussion (Resumed)

Mr. Justin Moran:

From our perspective, we need to deliver these wind farms to reduce our carbon emissions but the larger the turbine that can be used and the more efficient it is, the more efficient it is at generating electricity at lower cost. Taller turbines mean the power can be developed in a way that companies can bid into an option at a lower price. It means they can pass those savings to consumers. It is likely that in the years to come we are going to see - if they are onshore projects - they may be a little bit bigger than we would have had in the past, but bigger in terms of megawatts. Because the turbines themselves are more efficient, we need fewer turbines to get to our targets. For example, we have - Mr. Devane could probably correct me - approximately 2,500 turbines in this country to get to the 4,000 MW we have at present. We probably need only 1,000 turbines to get to the 2030 targets because we are using more powerful and more efficient turbines. The repowering example I provided in the opening statement is a good example of that.

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