‘Powering Prosperity’ – an ambitious Offshore Wind Industrial Strategy for Ireland
The Strategy has 40 actions for implementation in 2024 and 2025 and was developed in collaboration with other Government Departments and agencies. It is anchored on four core pillars:
- Offshore Wind Supply Chains: to build capacity and capability to develop the offshore wind farms that deliver on the 37GW target and give Ireland an edge in exporting products and services related to offshore wind energy (OWE);
- Research, Development, and Innovation: to give Ireland a competitive cutting edge in new technology and know-how for the sector;
- Balanced Regional Economic Development Opportunities: to drive growth from OWE in line with the Programme for Government priority of enabling all parts of Ireland to thrive so that Ireland as a whole can prosper; and
- Future Demand and End Uses for Offshore Renewable Energy: e.g. to develop new Green Energy Industrial Parks, which can attract major foreign direct investment, establish new indigenous green businesses and serve as test beds for green technological innovation to power the Irish economy of the future.
Key Ambitions of Powering Prosperity – Ireland’s Offshore Wind Industrial Strategy
Ireland, by 2030, will aim to:
- Develop an innovative enterprise ecosystem, with indigenous and multinational companies, that will provide world-leading service to the offshore wind sector.
- Dramatically scale up the enterprise base that will service the offshore wind sectors in Ireland and around the world.
- Deliver up to 5,000 jobs in the offshore wind sector and related industries.
- Maximise opportunities for companies and investors to develop a vibrant and successful supply chain.
- Proactively assist enterprise, workers, and the RD&I ecosystem in availing of these opportunities through targeted funding and supports.
This initial iteration of the Strategy covering 2024 and 2025 includes 40 actions. Some of the key actions that will be advanced in this iteration include:
- The establishment of an Offshore Wind Centre of Excellence (OWCE) to enable offshore wind supply chain companies in Ireland, government agencies and further and higher education institutions to access, adopt and accelerate new technologies, for example, in floating offshore wind and digital, that solve real world challenges and collaborate to drive the sector’s future competitiveness.
- Exploring the concept of Green Energy Industrial Parks with the potential to deliver large scale, impactful property, utility and infrastructure solutions, capable of attracting larger scale investments, co-located with renewable energy generation, providing new industrial opportunities for appropriate geographical locations where complementary renewable energy can be sourced/developed, e.g., offshore and onshore wind.
- Driving scale in the offshore wind supply chain through in-depth, one-to-one assistance to support transformational change in new and existing companies targeting scaled growth in the offshore wind supply chain both at home and in global markets.
- Building on international strategic partnerships with other countries to establish meaningful cooperation in supply chain development and knowledge transfer within the highly internationalised offshore wind industry.
