Irish wind farms had a strong start to the year with a new record for the most electricity ever produced in the month of January.
The January Wind Energy Report, published by Wind Energy Ireland, showed that 41% of the country’s power came from wind, up 9% on January 2022.
Wind farms produced 1479 gigawatt-hours of electricity last month, up 200GWh on the previous January best, and the seventh best month on record for wind power.
Noel Cunniffe, CEO of Wind Energy Ireland, said: “This is a very strong start to the year and builds on a strong final quarter of 2022 when wind energy was Ireland’s number one source of electricity.
“We need to accelerate the delivery of new wind farms and to do this we need the Government to invest in our planning system. Projects are spending more than a year waiting for decisions on applications for planning permission.
“We have no hope of reaching our 2030 targets without a functioning planning system and to do that we urgently need to see massive investment in An Bord Pleanála, the National Parks & Wildlife Service and key environmental NGOs to ensure applications can be quickly assessed and decided on.
“The pipeline of projects is there, the investment is there, but everything is slowed down by an under-resourced planning system that is completely unfit for purpose.”
The results of the report are based on EirGrid’s SCADA data compiled by MullanGrid and on market data provided by ElectroRoute.
This series will play an important role in informing the development of wind energy in Ireland.