Minister for Environment Eamon Ryan has rejected claims that he is impeding development of floating offshore wind and criticised “false promises” made by politicians
As The Irish Independent reports, Ryan was responding to comments by Fianna Fáil senator Lisa Chambers where she claimed he and his party were “getting green wrong”.
Senator Chambers, who is a European election candidate, had accused him and his party of ignoring the wind potential off the coast of her western constituency and refusing to develop floating turbines.
Ryan, who published the Future Framework for offshore wind earlier this week, said that floating wind farm technology was not sufficiently developed to cope with conditions in Irish waters.
“I would love to see floating offshore wind deployable today because that’s really our big opportunity,” he said.
“But I’m sorry I have to inform some of our colleagues in government that it’s not technically available or viable today,” he said.
Pointing out that floating wind off Scotland operates in wave heights of 10 metres, Ryan said that Ireland had 18-metre wave height and limited safe shipping days off the west coast.
“We need the technology to evolve further,"he said, and this is what industry major players were saying.
Read The Irish Independent here