Recently, Colm McCarthy attacked types of renewable energy available in Ireland – namely wind energy – as being unsuitable for this country.

At a time when agricultural emissions have been a regular feature in the Irish media and political debate, Colm fails to make any link between how renewable energy and reductions in agricultural emissions are two sides of the same coin in working towards our binding EU climate targets.

A narrative often used by Colm in his opposition to wind energy is that Ireland does not need additional generating capacity and that building more windfarms will cost Irish consumers. The reality is that the Irish economy is gradually rising again, which is putting increasing demands on our electricity system in powering the recovery, particularly with electricity-hungry high-tech companies such as Apple and Facebook establishing new data centres, which will be powered entirely by indigenous renewable energy.

The Irish wind energy industry has invested around €3bn in new renewable generation, and this has reduced, not increased, electricity prices. An international consultancy, Poyry, published a detailed study in March showing that Irish electricity consumers will be €43m/year better off in 2020 if we continue to build windfarms. So, we get to wean ourselves off expensive fossil fuels and save money in the process. A robust case for continuing to develop wind energy, most would agree.

Direct investment

What’s often overlooked too is that wind energy is powering direct investment into Irish communities, whether through well-known businesses who operate their own wind turbines to help fuel their operations and keep their business costs down, or through the more than 3,400 jobs created and €3bn which has been invested to date in almost 200 Irish windfarms operating in communities across Ireland. These are the same windfarms that met 25% of our national electricity demand for the first half of 2015.

Another critical factor in this story is our 85% dependence on energy imports from foreign pipelines, which sees over €6bn per annum leaving our shores. Renewable energy detractors often fail to acknowledge how that huge foreign energy dependency leaves us vulnerable and exposed to foreign whims in our energy supply, a situation which is being reduced thanks to indigenous Irish energy supplies such as wind energy.

It is too easy to condemn policy without proposing an alternative. How do we satisfy our energy needs if we don’t take the clean, local option? Do we rely on foreign energy imports and burn valuable natural resources that release millions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere?

Wind energy is predictable in its output, and it does not necessitate any further back-up on the Irish grid beyond the normal buffer for sudden large plant outages (which existed long before wind energy).

Furthermore, the European Commission has pointed out that for wind electricity in Ireland, the benefits for electricity consumers in terms of reduction in wholesale prices outweigh the costs of subsidies.

The fact is that wind energy is the most cost competitive form of Irish renewable generation and, as such, represents by far the best value for money to Irish consumers in meeting our renewable energy targets.

In the same way as we had open and honest conversations with all the people visiting wind farms last month, we are happy to have an open conversation with Colm, and in fact we’d like to invite him today to speak on a panel at our Autumn Wind Energy Conference in October. We do agree with Colm that a genuine discussion on our future energy is needed, and indeed a discussion is already taking place as part of the Government’s upcoming energy white paper, but such a discussion cannot be one-sided.

Kenneth Matthews is the chief executive of the Irish Wind Energy Association (IEWA).