Plans for landmark Irish offshore wind farm pulled

An application for planning permission has been officially withdrawn by Fuinneamh Sceirde Teoranta (FST), an Irish renewable energy project company specifically set up to develop the Sceirde Rocks site 5-12km off the west coast of Galway.

The €1.4 billion project would have comprised at least 30 turbines with a total capacity of 450MW.

According to Irish state broadcaster and news platform RTÉ (Raidió Teilifís Éireann), €35.4 million earmarked for ‘Performance Security’ from the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment has had to be written off.

FST had accumulated losses of €35.9 million, the state broadcaster said, with accounts showing that it invested €31.7 million on project costs between 2024 and 2025.

The project had been hit with a number of objections, including one from actor and comedian Tommy Tiernan who said allowing it to go ahead when there were more suitable sites further off-shore or inland ‘would be a totally irresponsible and disgusting thing to do’. 

FST said the decision had been reached ‘following the conclusion of a comprehensive technical assessment of all aspects of the project’.

“Continued analysis has shown that the site’s seabed geology is highly complex and deeply affected by severe currents and extreme wave heights. This has been particularly evident during the winter months,” it said.

Irish wind farms on the books

While the Sceirde Rocks wind farm was being hailed as a landmark project, its termination is certainly not the end of offshore wind in Ireland.

Ireland currently has just one operating offshore wind farm, the Arklow Bank Phase 1, which consists of seven turbines generating a total of just 25MW that was commissioned in 2004.

But three other wind farms with a total capacity of 2,624MW (2.6GW) are still in the pipeline:

• North Irish Sea Array (500MW) by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Statkraft
• Dublin Array (824MW) by RWE and Saorgus Energy
• Codling Wind Park (1,300MW) by joint venture between Fred. Olsen Seawind and EDF Renewables

They are all at various stages of planning and consent, and the tiny existing Arklow Bank project, by SSE Renewables, is planned to be expanded to around 800MW by the end of 2027.