Europe’s future is “inherently caught up in how we make progress on energy policy” and while there is new political momentum for transitioning its economy, financing it faces immense difficulties, Fianna Fáil MEP Barry Andrews has said.
Addressing the Wind Energy Ireland (WEI) annual conference on Friday, Mr Andrews said the EU’s green agenda was now built around ensuring energy security with understanding that competitiveness cannot be built without reducing energy prices.
It was accepted this had to be backed by a European energy union, electrification and a legal framework for European grids, he added.
Despite electoral upheaval and the demise of the Greens across Europe, there was a new political coalition backing the energy transition, said Mr Andrews who is a member of the European Parliament’s energy committee.
The Draghi report on competitiveness “requires massive investment in European infrastructure”, yet there were very limited sources of European funding, which were tiny when compared to competitors like the US, he said. It called for a 5 per cent of EU GDP investment in infrastructure but the current level was less than 1 per cent with the US at 20 per cent.
This was heaping pressure on the European Investment Bank, which was more risk-averse than some commercial banks. They were likely to push back, he said, and say to member states “well if you want us to do more; give us more”.
Despite the challenges, Mr Andrews said “a genuine EU energy union” was realisable with appropriate governance, improved permitting and scaled-up interconnection – with the potential to save member states €40 billion a year.
Christian Kjaer, chief public affairs officer with the Irish grid technology company SuperNode, said that with wind resources in the north and solar in the south, Europe had the opportunity to build a Europe-wide grid and, ultimately, a supergrid; “a delivery device for low-cost renewables that can benefit all European citizens”.
But combined grids would need higher capacity by using superconductors or some other innovation. Given the capacity of China, a global leader in solar and renewables manufacturing, while delivering on decarbonisation years ahead of schedule, some way had to be found for their involvement in the transition while overcoming trade issues with the EU, he said.
This pivotal moment needed to be put in the context of €640 billion spent by the EU on imported fossil fuels in 2023 – 4 per cent of EU GDP, Mr Kjaer said.
Meanwhile in its first annual planning report issued on Friday, WEI said An Bord Pleanála rejected planning applications from 12 Irish wind farms in 2024 with an estimated combined capacity of 677 megawatts (MW) with 30 projects (1,598MW) awaiting decision at the end of 2024. All were classed as strategic infrastructure.
It estimated that to achieve the 9,000MW of onshore wind energy by 2030, a key target in the Government’s climate plan, it would have needed to have approved 1,720MW during this period. While the refusal rate of projects increased “due to anti-wind county development plans”, there was a 16 per cent increase in approvals compared to 2023.
WEI chief executive Noel Cunniffe said: “Irish people want clean, affordable and secure energy. That is what wind farms deliver but...before we can build new wind farms, we need to first get them through the planning system and we are simply not seeing enough new projects to enable us to reach our 2030 targets.”
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