PLANS for a multi-million euro wave energy plant off the Clare coast could soon be sunk as the government appears to be dragging its feet in legislating for the project.
It was announced earlier this year that a license for the project, which has been earmarked for White Strand in Miltown Malbay, had been authorised by the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources however, The Clare People has learned that this license has yet to be issued.
In addition, the legislation necessary to allow for a private company to “lease” a section a Irish water from the state has not even been drafted.
According to Kieran O’Brien, Executive Director of Carnegie Wave Energy and former Managing Director the ESB National Grid, the Clare site has fallen behind rival locations in Scotland and England – and if a decision was being made today, the Clare site would not even be in the running.
“The Minister has announced that we are to be granted a license, we haven’t actually got it yet, it is still in the legal process,” said Kieran.
“After we actually get the license we have a lot of technical survey work to undertake and once those surveys are completed we would have to secure a lease for the ground. The legislation that will grant us a lease is not even in place in Ireland at the moment. So, even if we were ready right now, we couldn’t do anything in Clare.
“To be frank, I’m going to spend the first two weeks of September in the UK – I’ll be talking to people in Scotland and down in Cornwall and in London. These people have all this stuff in place.
“In Scotland, they have one agency who looks after all of this. If you want to talk to fishermen, you talk to Joe; if you want to talk about a lease, talk to Mike; if you want support from the Scottish universities, you talk to someone else.
“They are extremely well organised and funding – they have the administrative organisation that investors who want to spend million like. The Irish authorities have a long way to go before they are in that area.”
If successful, the project would see a large spherical wave buoys being built to harvest the power of the sea. The movement of the buoy would be used to turn turbines which would in turn create electricity. The buoys which will be used off the Clare coast would be of full commercial size, have a diameter of between 16 and 20 metres and produce up to 1.5 megawatts a day.
A number of Irish companies are currently developing wave energy generators but none have yet progressed past the prototype stage of development.