Will Our Wind Farms Blow?

Big, far away…

hD student Nuala Carr has been in touch about her research project exploring coastal community perspectives of community benefit fund provision from offshore wind energy.

Which, in plain Oirish, means finding out if towns and villages are going to be any better off when wind farms land off their shores.

To this end, Nuala is hosting a free online workshop to explore how such places as sunny Greystones will be affected after not one but two wind farms have now been given the green light for our horizon.

Here’s the lowdown…

The development of offshore wind energy is underway off the East Coast of Ireland.

One research project has been trying to understand coastal community perspectives of the community benefit funds that will be paid out from each of these developments.

ll renewable energy developments availing of the government’s Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (RESS) are now required to pay €2 per MWh per annum in community benefit funds. For a 1GW offshore wind farm this payment could be quite substantial, potentially generating around €6 million per year for the region.

If you (or anyone you know) are interested in taking part in an online workshop to hear about the findings of the research to date and to test the validity of these findings exploring coastal community perspectives of offshore wind energy community benefit funds, please contact Nuala Carr directly by emailing ncarr04@qub.ac.uk.

The workshop will be held on the evening of Wednesday, June 21st from 7pm to 9pm, and more information and a link to the workshop will be emailed to you.