January 8, 2013
Ireland

Wind farms to be located in Coillte forests in Co Kildare

By Noel O Driscoll | Kildare Nationalist | January 08, 2013 | www.kildare-nationalist.ie

The company which plans to locate wind farms in Co Kildare and four other midland counties, has announced a deal with Coillte to locate the wind farms on forestry lands.

Last July Element Power announced plans for their Greenwire project, which will see 40 new wind farms constructed in the midland counties of Kildare, Meath, Westmeath, Laois and Offaly. It is planned that these wind farms will channel energy to the UK market via dedicated sub-sea cables. When the plan was initially announced the company said that the initiative would entail an €8 billion investment by the company and create 3,000 long-term jobs and as many as 10,000 jobs in the construction phase.

Element Power has now announced that it has signed an option agreement to lease lands from Coillte, Ireland’s leading natural resources company, which will enable it to consider wind farm development on some Coillte-owned sites in the midlands, as part of a major wind energy export project.

Greenwire is the first and only wind export project in Ireland with firm grid connection to the UK National Grid having earlier in the year secured two connection points in Wales with a view to delivering 3,000 megawatts of wind energy from Ireland to the UK by 2018.

Welcoming the announcement today, CEO of Element Power Ireland, Tim Cowhig said, “We welcome Coillte as Greenwire’s first strategic partner and will be identifying others in reaching final definition of this ground-breaking project. We intend having option agreements with all landowners who wish to participate in this project completed and signed early this year with a view to submitting a planning application by the end of 2013. Those plans are firmly on course and this announcement gives our project substantial additional momentum.”

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2013/01/08/wind-farms-to-be-located-in-coillte-forests-in-co-kildare/