Latest news with #JustinMoran
RTÉ News
12-08-2025
- Business
- RTÉ News
Wind energy made up 24% of total supply in July
Wind energy made up almost a quarter of the country's electricity last month, according to the latest report from Wind Energy Ireland. There was 786 gigawatt hours of wind energy generated in the month - making it the third biggest July on record. Cork was the biggest source of energy in the month, with 85 GWh generated, closely followed by Kerry at 84 GWh. Offaly, Galway and Mayo were also major suppliers, with the five counties delivering more than 40% of the country's total. "A lot of counties there on the west coast, or the south-west coast where you have a huge amount of available wind energy," said Justin Moran, director of external affairs at Wind Energy Ireland. "Those wind farms are replacing imported fossil fuels." It means that wind represented almost one-third of all energy generated in the first seven months of the year. Mr Moran said that this was important in reducing Ireland's emissions, but also in improving energy prices and the country's resilience. "It helps make Ireland more energy secure and it pushes down wholesale electricity prices, which helps to protect consumers," he said. "The more wind we can get in the system the less we have to rely on expensive imported gas, and the more we can do to continue to push down energy bills for families, for consumers, for businesses that are really hard-pressed at the moment." The amount of supply coming from wind would also be higher, he said, were it not for infrastructural limitations. "We're losing more and more of the electricity that we do produce because our existing grid is not strong enough to take the power wind farms produce," he said. "Last year we lost 14% of the electricity we could have produced because wind turbines were forced to switch off or reduce the amount of power they were generating because the grid couldn't take it." Progress on further developing Ireland's wind energy network has been slow but Mr Moran said there have been signs of improvement in recent times. That includes an improvement in the speed of decision-making, while the recently updated National Development Plan also commits a significant amount of money to upgrading the country's electricity system. "We're seeing improvements in decision timelines from An Bord An Bord Pleanala, decision timelines from the Enviromental and Planning Courts - we're hoping that's going to start improving too," he said. "The additional €3.5 billion for grid development announced in the revised National Development Plan, that's really, really important. "That's the kind of leadership we need to see to transform our electricity system and speed up the delivery of clean power to Irish homes and businesses." Yesterday major Danish energy firm Ørsted announced plans to raise the equivalent of €8 billion as it faces a major financial challenge. That includes the company's inability to sell a stake in a major wind development off the coast of New York, due to the Trump Administration's hostile policy approach to renewable energy. Mr Moran said that the shift in policy in the US could have a knock-on effect on Ireland's attempts to ramp up wind energy projects, but it is also a reminder of the importance of doing so. "I do think it's going to make raising investment more challenging," he said. "But it's really a lesson for Europe and for Ireland - what we're seeing is the US government, captured by the fossil fuel industry in essense, turning on clean, affordable power generation. "The lesson for us is that we really need to accelerate the delivery of renewable energy - we need to move towards Irish and European energy independence, we need to get away from a situation where electricity consumers are held hostage to the whims of a dictator in the Kremlin or an erratic US president," Mr Moran said. "We need to be in charge of our energy future."
Irish Examiner
11-08-2025
- Business
- Irish Examiner
Cork takes Kerry's crown as Ireland's top county for generating wind energy
Cork knocked Kerry off top spot as Ireland's top county for wind power generation last month, according to Wind Energy Ireland (WEI). Wind power generation in July 2025 totalled 786 gigawatt-hours, with Cork wind farms knocking Kerry's off the top spot for the first time since the beginning of this year. July 2025 represented the third best month on record for electricity generation from Irish wind farms, WEI said in its monthly report on Tuesday. Wind farms provided 24% of the country's electricity in July - up slightly compared to July 2024 - but wholesale electricity prices rose slightly after several months of sustained falls. Cork produced 85 GWh and was closely followed by Kerry (84 GWh), Offaly (54 GWh), Galway (53 GWh) and Mayo (51 GWh). Together, the top three counties provided more than a quarter of Ireland's wind power last month. 'The more wind we can get on the system, the less we have to rely on expensive imported gas, and the more we can do to help bring down the cost of energy bills. Wind farms, like those in Cork and Kerry, are playing an important part in reducing our dependency on imported fossil fuels and boosting Ireland's energy security," said WEI director of external affairs Justin Moran. 'Every year we are losing more and more of Ireland's most affordable renewable electricity because our existing grid is not strong enough to take the power our wind farms produce. 'The additional €3.5bn for grid development announced in the revised National Development Plan will help transform our electricity system and speed up the delivery of clean and affordable power to Irish homes and businesses.' The average wholesale price of electricity in Ireland per megawatt-hour during July 2025 was €99.61, down 10% from €110.94 during the same month last year. Prices on days with the most wind power saw the average cost of a megawatt-hour of electricity fall to €84.80 per megawatt hour and rise to €111.55 on days when the State relied almost entirely on fossil fuels. Wind energy has generated 31% of Ireland's electricity in the first seven months of this year.
Irish Times
15-07-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Irish ports unsuitable to construct offshore wind projects, committee hears
The Government will have to ringfence funding for the expansion of Ireland's ports, an Oireachtas committee heard on Tuesday, with just one port on the island capable of facilitating the construction of floating wind projects . While Belfast Harbour meets the spatial requirements to act as a construction hub for offshore projects, not a single port in the Republic is currently equipped to do so, Justin Moran, director of external affairs at Wind Energy Ireland (WEI), told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Fisheries and Maritime Affairs . Mr Moran said the industry body has concerns about the availability of Belfast as a hub for the construction of floating wind schemes. He said the wind industry could build for Irish offshore projects using Cherbourg or ports in Wales as construction hubs. 'We don't want to do that,' Mr Moran said. 'We want to build them from Irish ports. 'We shouldn't act as if Belfast will simply be available, waiting for us,' Mr Moran told TDs and senators. 'Belfast has contracts to service British wind farms on their side of the Irish Sea, so having a port available to construct and develop a wind farm [in the Republic] is critical. While there had been some progress in the Republic, the development of port infrastructure requires substantial Government investment, Mr Moran said. He said a new national port strategy, which will be put out for public consultation in the autumn, must facilitate 'direct investment in our ports'. Mr Moran also said that the State could do more to allay the concerns of Ireland's fishing industry about the development of offshore wind and its impact on fisheries. 'Fishermen tell us they firmly believe that if wind farms are built, the Government or some other State agency will prevent fishing,' he said. 'It will be very helpful and provide reassurance to the seafood industry, if the committee could give courage to the Government to give a commitment on that matter and to ensure there is no ban on fishing near all offshore wind sites.' Capt Robert McCabe, chairman of the Government's Seafood/Offshore Renewable Energy Working Group, said stakeholders are keenly awaiting An Coimisiún Pleanála's first decisions on applications for offshore projects under the new maritime planning system instituted in 2021. 'The conditions [attached to those planning decisions] would speak to a lot of the issues that we raise,' he said.
Irish Examiner
29-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Examiner
Renewable energy, a sure route to ensuring the lights stay on
'Just imagine for a second that there was no climate emergency,' says Justin Moran. 'The globe isn't warming, everything is fine, there is no threat to life. You would still be insane not to be accelerating the development renewable sources of energy. It is the cheapest form of new electricity. The price drops in solar over the last couple of years have been incredible. Even if there was no climate emergency, you'd be doing this anyway and doing it as fast as you can.' Moran, a self-confessed 'energy nerd' is Director of External Affairs at Wind Energy Ireland (WEI), the body that represents Ireland's wind industry, with over 200 affiliated members. Their goal is neither simple nor trivial. Individually and collectively, they are on a mission to transform windy weather and odd day of Irish sunshine into the million blessings that a supply of electricity brings to civic society. Passionate in his advocacy of the urgency of renewable energy and the replacement of fossil fuels in the power chain, Moran sounds slightly bewildered that there are still people among us yet to grasp the importance of this transformation. He sits his argument on a stool with three legs — climate mitigation, energy security and the inarguable cost benefits of change. 'Onshore wind is the most affordable source of new energy — it helps consumers in that it drives down the price of electricity,' says Moran. 'Since 2020 onshore wind has saved over €1.7 billion in consumer bills. We spend about one-million euro every hour importing fossil fuels into Ireland for energy and there is absolutely no reason why we should be doing that. What we should be doing is putting in an energy system that ensures that money stays at home and that we have energy security and energy independence.' Ireland is doing quite well when it comes to producing electricity from onshore wind sources. Over a third of our energy demand is satisfied by this source, a higher proportion than any other country in Europe, which would come as a surprise to anyone who has walked across a Donegal beach on a blustery day. 'We've the best wind conditions anywhere in Europe,' explains Moran. In parts of the West of Ireland, the onshore winds are as good as offshore. Government has focused on the support schemes, the policies, the frameworks that have allowed us to build this capacity. Passengers wait before boarding their train at Sants railway station in Barcelona in April, a day after a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France. But there is an uncomfortable structural wrinkle lurking in the data. Ireland went all in on onshore wind farms in the early days of the 'rush to renewable' while other countries adopted more blended energy strategies, diversifying into solar, nuclear and offshore to supplement and balance their onshore output. Ireland cannot meet its net-zero targets in the coming decades through a disproportionate reliance on onshore wind farms and accelerating delivery from disparate sources is critical to meeting Ireland's international obligations. Justin Moran says that his members at WEI stand ready, willing and able to rise to the challenge. 'Our plan is to produce nine-thousand megawatts of onshore wind energy by 2030 and we are currently at about five, either built or in build,' he continues. 'We believe that there is enough land in Ireland suitable for onshore wind that could get us to about fifteen megawatts. One of the things we are asking of government is to set us a target of 11k megawatts by 2035 and fifteen by 2040. We are asking that we be given us those targets, and they will enhance our possibilities.' Moran acknowledges that there are real and valid social and community barriers in the way of these goals and that targets aren't met just by writing them on a piece of paper. A harmonious coalition of suppliers, government, local administration and the citizenry has yet to fully form on the pace and nature of the solution. In view of this, if his fairy Godmother made him supreme leader for a day and granted him one public policy credit, where would he spend it? He mulls the question long and silently, and then greedily chooses two options. 'Planning and Grid. We need to work with the regions and the county councils to identify land for wind energy. We estimate about 1.8% of the land in Ireland is available for wind farm development. Each county council tends to have its own approach for zoning, but if we could get to the point where we had national approach on how to identify land and understand how much power you could generate from it the planning system would be transformed. "A lot of the cost is in how long the project has to stay in the planning system. We need to develop winds farms more affordably. This is the government's direction of travel, but it needs to happen, much, much faster.' The criticality of a robust infrastructure to harness and distribute electricity is to the front of his mind and at the top of his concerns. Electrical power is like an unsold airplane seat — once the plane takes off the asset perishes, and it can never be sold again. It is the same with electricity that cannot find a route to the grid. At times in Ireland, up to 14% of electricity can be wasted because the grid is not strong enough to process the power and onshore wind is instructed to shut down temporarily. It's a frustration that Moran wears heavily. 'We know that we can provide far more electricity than we will ever need in this country,' he maintains. 'The resource is astonishing; it boggles the mind, but one of the questions is what do we do with that surplus wind? First thing we could do is export it, one of the challenges is that we are a small, isolated island of an electricity grid, in mainland Europe, there is always somewhere for your power to go. "Another challenge is that Ireland is an expensive place to build a wind or solar farm which means that the prices in Britain or France are cheaper than us. So not only do you need an enormous amount of the resource, but you also need to be able to sell more cheaply than your competitors.' Moran is speaking less than a month after Spain and Portugal had gone dark for almost a day with an as yet clearly unexplained catastrophic grid failure. Sixty million people in first-world modern economies without power and the sum of all fears for 'energy-nerds' had come to pass. We Irish often run ourselves down, but where we have got to now with onshore is something we can be proud of. But if we want to fully get to that clean energy future, we need to get the projects through planning and we need a stronger grid. There is no sense in building a wind farm in Donegal or a solar farm in Spain if it cannot get the power to your house. The new renewable systems will have hundreds of generators, and they are not going to be located necessarily beside the bigger cities. You need a system to move that electricity, and this only works if you have a strong grid. Onshore wind farms reduce more carbon emissions than every other energy technology combined in this country, but decarbonisation is only the number two issue. The number one issue is that when you press your light switch something happens. The lights cannot go out.
