Sir, – Jack Horgan-Jones reports on Minister Darragh O’Brien’s criticism of the Maritime Area Regulatory Authority (Mara) over delays in consents for offshore infrastructure (“Wind farm delays prompt ministerial criticism of Irish marine regulator”, August 10th).
The Minister is entitled to demand that Mara performs its statutory functions efficiently. Delays increase costs and uncertainty. But it is important not to confuse a symptom with the disease.
Mara is being asked to facilitate an unprecedented expansion of industrial activity in Ireland’s maritime space while simultaneously ensuring environmental law is properly applied. Ireland’s obligations under EU nature legislation are not new, nor were they invented by Mara.
Yet the State has repeatedly failed to meet its obligations to designate and properly manage protected areas. The European Commission has now taken formal action over Ireland’s failure to designate protected areas at sea.
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There is also a more fundamental question which receives remarkably little attention: is offshore wind necessarily the right answer to Ireland’s energy needs?
Offshore wind has been presented almost as the Holy Grail of the energy transition. But intermittent generation does not eliminate the need for reliable electricity supplies, and there is no automatic guarantee that massive investment in offshore wind will reduce Ireland’s dependence on fossil fuels.
Indeed, the Government appears quite comfortable with rapidly increasing electricity demand from very large users such as data centres. This raises an awkward question. If we are struggling to produce sufficient clean electricity and are investing enormous sums in new renewable generation, are we really reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, or are we simply creating additional renewable capacity to accommodate ever-growing industrial electricity demand?
The distinction matters. Every additional demand placed on the electricity system has consequences for generation, grid infrastructure and back-up capacity. Meanwhile, alternatives such as rooftop solar remain comparatively neglected, despite their ability to generate electricity close to where it is consumed and without the same demands on our grid and marine environment.
Mara and the Minister may therefore be facing an impossible task. O’Brien is right to challenge poor performance, but putting pressure on the regulator in this way will not turn an incoherent energy strategy into a coherent one.
Before demanding that Mara move faster, the Government should explain clearly what problem this enormous offshore programme is intended to solve, who benefits from it, what it will cost consumers and whether it will genuinely reduce Ireland’s fossil-fuel dependence.
Otherwise, we risk sacrificing both environmental protection and sound energy policy in the name of simply getting projects built. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL O’MERA,
Fenor,
Co Waterford.
