{"id":426449,"date":"2026-05-01T06:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T06:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/426449\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T06:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T06:06:10","slug":"ireland-needs-to-scale-up-its-vision-for-offshore-wind-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/426449\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland needs to scale up its vision for offshore wind \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sir, \u2013 John McManus is right to describe the designation of offshore wind<\/a> as critical infrastructure as a \u201cno-brainer\u201d(\u201cWhy is Jack Chambers so coy about designating offshore wind as critical infrastructure<\/a>?\u201d, Business, April 29th).<\/p>\n

But the deeper issue is not simply planning delay, it is that Ireland is still thinking too small about the scale of its offshore<\/a> wind opportunity.<\/p>\n

The current pipeline of about 4.7GW is being treated as a major national achievement. In reality, it is only an early tranche of what Ireland\u2019s waters can support. Even conservative assessments suggest 20GW plus is achievable within the next two decades, with significantly higher potential once floating offshore wind becomes commercially mature.<\/p>\n

Floating technology is particularly important because it removes one of the most persistent constraints on expansion, visual impact. Much of Ireland\u2019s future wind resource lies far offshore in the Atlantic, where development would be largely invisible from land.<\/p>\n

At that scale, offshore wind ceases to be just a domestic electricity solution. It becomes an industrial platform. Countries that moved early in wind energy, such as Denmark, built globally significant supply chains and expertise. Ireland risks limiting itself to energy import substitution when it could be positioning itself as an exporter of clean power and a location for energy intensive industry.<\/p>\n

Designation as critical infrastructure would help accelerate delivery and reduce unnecessary friction in the system. But the bigger gap is strategic, Ireland is still calibrating offshore wind against today\u2019s demand rather than tomorrow\u2019s opportunity.<\/p>\n

The question is not whether Ireland can build 4GW or 10GW. It is whether it is prepared to plan for a system several times larger, with the infrastructure and ambition that scale requires. \u2013 Yours, etc,<\/p>\n

STEPHEN KEEGAN,<\/p>\n

D\u00fan Laoghaire,<\/p>\n

Co Dublin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir, \u2013 John McManus is right to describe the designation of offshore wind as critical infrastructure as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[37635,61,60,43,3400,16389],"class_list":["post-426449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-energy-crisis","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-renewable-energy","tag-renewables"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}