Does the government support wind energy in Ireland?
The government supports the development of all renewable based electricity generating plants including wind turbine generators. They currently achieve this mainly through the administration of competitions under the Alternative Energy Requirement (AER) programme, which gives wind energy companies a guaranteed market to sell power. Prospective generators are invited to make a formal application to build, own and operate new wind farms and to supply electricity from these to the Electricity Supply Board (ESB) under a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) of up to fifteen years duration. Since the programme was launched in 1995, six AER competitions have been held. The sixth competition AER VI was lunched in February 2003 and offered support for the first time to offshore wind energy.
