The Minister for Marine and Natural Resources has today granted a licence which will allow wind energy group Eirtricity to proceed with its plans to build a €750m wind power generation plant on a sand bank 10 miles off the coast of Arklow, Co Wicklow.
Final negotiations over the foreshore licence took place last night between Department officials and Eirtricity, which is managed by former Bord na Mona chief Eddie O'Connor.
O'Connor says the plant could produce up 500 megawatts of electricity - 10% of the country's electricity needs - through a series of turbines sunk into an undersea sandbank that runs for 24 kilometres off the Arklow coast. At the moment Ireland gets just 2% of its electricity from renewable means.
The construction phase is expected to generate over 500 jobs. Eirtricity have already spent €2.7 million on the project.
'Today heralds the dawning of a new age of clean, green energy, harvested from two plentiful renewable resources, the sea and the wind,' Minister Frank Fahey said today as he granted Eirtricity the licence.
He said the station should reduce Ireland's emissions of harmful carbon dioxide gas by 13.5 million tonnes a year.
