It’s difficult to get it right. Under climate law, we need to increase onshore wind farms by 9GW by 2030, with even more development required by 2050. However, as with most infrastructure projects, opposition can be fierce. Concerns about the proximity of wind farms to homes, towns, nature areas, bogs, rivers and so on, can kill a project.

The reality is that no matter where wind energy developments are built, someone will inevitably be unhappy. But under Ireland’s climate law, these developments are necessary. Furthermore, relying more on natural gas, peat, or oil, or waiting for a magical silver bullet that doesn’t yet exist, does nothing but jeopardise our country’s energy security. Developing indigenous energy sources is, therefore, crucial for Ireland’s future.

However, this does not mean that projects can be built anywhere. A significant effort must go into identifying suitable locations for renewable projects. One way to assist developers in this process is to map the country for potential development sites, eliminating those with constraints.

Wind Energy Ireland, the country’s wind energy representative group, has taken on this task.

Mapping suitable locations

Irish planning and environmental consultancy MKO carried out the mapping exercise and identified roughly 1,302km2 of land on which new wind farms would be viable to build without facing any constraints. This is just under 2% of the land in the Republic of Ireland.

The exercise involved identifying potential impediments or restrictions to onshore wind farms, mapping and overlaying these constraints, and finding areas that may remain available for development.

Assuming a generation potential of 16.9?MW per km², the unconstrained area could, depending on its capacity, potentially support the development of a further 6,000?MW of onshore wind energy. However, the interesting part of this report is how they arrived at this land area, and gives an insight into what developers look for when deciding a location.

Progress so far

The current Government target for onshore wind deployment is 9GW, as set out in the Climate Action Plan. There are already over 9GW of onshore wind farm projects at various stages of development. Approximately 5.25 GW is currently connected and operational, or currently under construction, approximately 2.5 GW is permitted but not yet constructed, and a further approximate 1.5 GW is currently seeking planning permission or the subject of ongoing judicial review proceedings.

This study excluded the area of these 365 wind farms and 3,190 individual wind turbines. A number of other key constraints were mapped.

Distance from properties

One of the most contentious issues with wind farms is the distance from houses. For the exercise, they used all domestic and commercial Eircodes from the Q3 2024 Eircode dataset. A setback buffer zone, set at four times the tip height of the wind turbine, was then applied to each location. This is the setback distance contained in the 2019 Draft Revised Wind Energy Development Guidelines.

For the purposes of this study, a turbine of 175m tip height was selected, resulting in a setback distance of 700 metres from each property. As a result of this approach, all settlements, villages, towns and cities are constrained out. See Figure 1.

Other constraints

In addition to properties, the report modelled multiple key constraints, such as archaeological sites and monuments, special areas of conservation, special protection areas, national parks, areas susceptible to landslides, sensitive landscapes and other infrastructure.

The full list of constraints and the buffer zones used for the modelling can be seen in Table 1.

Locations of future projects

The authors state that, due to the commercially sensitive nature of the data, maps of the combined unconstrained areas won’t be published, as they may be misinterpreted as maps of potential wind farm sites.

However, the report notes that the Northern and Western Regional Assembly (NWRA) area will account for 45% of the country’s future onshore wind energy potential, as mapped in the study. The Southern Regional Assembly (SRA) area will account for 29%, and the Eastern and Midlands Regional Assembly (EMRA) area will account for 26% of the country’s future onshore wind energy potential.

As reported by the Irish Farmers Journal in February, under the new National Planning Framework, each regional assembly will be given a regional renewable electricity target, which will be divided among the counties, feeding into new local authority renewable energy strategies and county development plans.

According to draft plans seen by the Irish Farmers Journal, 35% of new wind farms are set to be located in the NWRA, 40% in the SRA, and 25% in the EMRA, which differs somewhat from this study.

Commenting on the new report, CEO of Wind Energy Ireland, Noel Cunniffe called on the Government to set new targets for onshore wind energy of 11,000 MW by 2035 and 15,000 MW by 2040, reflecting the results of the report.