Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 15 July 2025

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Fisheries and Maritime Affairs

Planning Challenges in Offshore Renewable Energy: Discussion

2:00 am

Mr. Paul Kelly:

The operational lifetime of a wind farm is typically dictated by the technology invested in and the design that is put into that technology. Everything has a design life. The phase 1 planning applications that have been submitted have typically sought between about 25 and 35 years of an operational lifetime but they ultimately have a long stop date dictated by their maritime area consent, MAC, under which the projects need to be decommissioned after a life of 45 years, typically, from the time that the maritime area consent was granted. The consent is granted early in the development phase of the projects. Therefore, between the development timeline, the consenting timeline, the construction and operational timeline, those phase 1 projects need to be decommissioned by 2067, typically.

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