Thursday, October 24, 2024

Swiss firm JC Montfort to enter Irish market with new wind farm

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The company has been eyeing projects in Ireland since 2020, and is also targeting sites for solar farms.

It is believed to be pursuing a wind farm project in the townland of Illaunbaun in Co Clare.

The company did not respond to a request for comment.

JC Montfort is controlled by Richard Jouven and Andréa Jouven.

The firm has operational wind farm schemes in Spain and France. It has wind farm projects in development in Moldovia, Tunisia and France. It also has operational solar farms in Portugal and Spain and is developing schemes in the Caribbean, the US and Tunisia.

In 2020, JC Montfort asked an Irish energy consultancy firm to assess its potential entry into Ireland, with a target of initially securing onshore wind energy projects that would be generating up to 100MW of power. It also wanted to identify potential sites for solar energy farms.

Ireland has a target of generating 80pc of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2030.

Onshore wind farms provided 28pc of Ireland’s electricity last month, while solar farms and other renewable sources accounted for 3pc, according to Wind Energy Ireland. In the first nine months of this year, wind farms have generated 32pc of the country’s electricity.

With the Oireachtas having last week approved the new South Coast Designated Maritime Area Plan, there are hopes that an auction will take place early next year for the first of four huge offshore sites that could be developed. They include a potential 900MW offshore farm that could be completed early in the next decade.

“These six projects, known collectively as the phase one projects, are the only ones which can be generating power by 2030,” noted Noel Cunniffe, the chief executive of Wind Energy Ireland.

A large number of fixed and floating offshore wind farms are planned for around the Irish coast.

The National Climate Plan aims to have 6GW of onshore wind farm potential installed by next year, with 9GW available by 2030. It also anticipates having at least 5GW of offshore wind farms operational by 2030, with the target of hitting 20GW by 2040.

Companies including the ESB, SSE, Source Galileo, EDF, Orsted and Statkraft are among the companies pursuing offshore wind energy projects.

Earlier this year, the Irish Independent revealed that Bord Gáis Energy is teaming up with a unit of the Australian investment giant Macquarie Asset Management in a joint venture to develop offshore wind farms around Ireland.

It is a major new strategy for the ­Centrica-owned utility, which is not currently involved in any offshore wind energy projects.

Macquarie’s Corio Generation unit is a specialist developer of offshore wind farms. It is developing the 450MW Sceirde Rocks wind farm off the west coast of Ireland. It is developing that in conjunction with the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. The project is slated for completion in 2030.

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