Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 1 March 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Energy - Ambition and Challenges: Discussion

Mr. Jim Dollard:

I will be brief. We support onshore wind. We think there will be a requirement for onshore wind growth over the coming years of the order of 3 GW. As the committee will know, we are working with Coillte on the joint venture, FutureEnergy Ireland, which will develop about 1 GW of wind. We believe that will be required and is very important. Can we miss our targets? If we do not get the issues we called out right, I think we can. It is a very large target, so unless we make a huge concerted effort and tackle the issues, it could be missed. Is the target correct? Yes, it is, but there will be a target beyond that and we need to think about the current target in that context. There will be attrition between now and then but we must have the confidence in ourselves about 2040 and 2050. There will be other targets.

Does Mr. Lennon wish to say something about the supply chain?