The prospect of Ireland as a renewable energy superpower – the Saudi Arabia of wind – moved closer on Friday when a contract was signed with France to start work on the €1.6 billion Celtic Interconnector.
The project will for the first time link Ireland to the continental electricity grid. A connection to the UK is the State’s only existing external link.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan, French minister for energy transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher and representatives of the EU Commission and European Investment Bank (EIB) were present in Paris as Mark Foley of Eirgrid and Xavier Piechaczyk of the French electricity transporter RTE signed the contract on the Irish Ambassador’s desk.
Mr Martin said the 575km cable between “my home county of Cork” and Brittany was “representative of the deep and enduring connections between our two countries”.
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The 700 MW high tension cable will transport current from French nuclear power plants and renewable energy sources to Ireland, and from Irish wind and solar installations to France. It will have the capacity to power 450,000 homes. The interconnector will send power from the country whose electricity is cheaper at a given moment. Competitive pricing should lower electricity costs to consumers, especially if reliance on gas is decreased.
“If the price is low in France, then obviously electricity will flow into the Irish market. If the price is low in Ireland, it will flow the other way. The real benefit for us is that into the next decade we have excess power. We have surplus,” Mr Ryan said.
“When the wind is not blowing, we have this backup capability from France to help us meet our system needs. That’s the beauty of this. It matches. The balancing system between variable supply and variable demand makes this a win-win for both markets.”
No one knows how much of the electricity will be nuclear, how much renewable, with Mr Ryan saying “you cannot separate out which electron is which” and that “it’s all part of the one synchronised system”.
Nearly two-thirds of Ireland’s electricity is generated by wind. “We are really going to go strong on solar in the intervening years” before the interconnector comes online in 2027, Mr Ryan said. By the end of the decade the aim is for up to 80 per cent of Irish electricity to come from renewables.
“We are huge on renewables. That’s what we have real expertise in; balancing renewable supply in an isolated, synchronised grid,” Mr Ryan said.
Mr Ryan said by developing offshore wind Ireland could quintuple its current electrical production to 35 gigawatts. . “That export capability is one of the real potentials here.”
Previously, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said “Ireland can be a renewable superpower…the success story of the clean energy transition”.
The commission is contributing €530 million to the cost of the interconnector, which has increased from earlier estimates of €1 billion to €1.6 billion due to the costs of steel, shipping and other variables rising. The EIB is loaning €300 million to the project, with Eirgrid to pay 65 per cent of the remaining cost and RTE 35 per cent.
Britain seemed a ghostly presence at the signing ceremony. The Ambassador’s office, where the contract was signed, was the bedroom of Edward, Prince of Wales, in 1912 when he was a guest of the Marquis de Breteuil’s family for three months. King George V had dinner with the de Breteuil family in what is now Ireland’s Embassy on the eve of the start of the first World War.
Mr Ryan said the first feasibility studies for the project started before Brexit, in 2013, and that it would have happened regardless. Ireland imports a small percentage of its electricity, but three-quarters of its gas, from the UK.
Asked whether the interconnector would reduce dependency on British energy, Mr Ryan said:“What we need to start thinking about now is connecting the UK, France and Ireland together. This renewable system won’t work if it’s not regional, if it is not based on cooperation.”
The UK left the North Seas Energy Cooperation group in 2020. The commission and Germany said it was inappropriate for the UK to remain after Brexit, but others argued that the group, which is comprised of eight EU member states and Norway, plus the EU Commission, is not an EU body but an intergovernmental organisation.
Ireland currently holds the presidency of the group and will welcome the UK back in on December 18th.
“What is starting to happen is that we are overcoming some of the rupture of Brexit,” Mr Ryan said. “The UK rejoining the North Seas Energy Cooperation agreement is a sign that we will not allow Brexit undermine what is in all our interests, which is energy cooperation.”
