It is estimated that in Quarter 1 2010 there was 1651 MW of installed renewable generation on the Irish electricity system. Ireland is on schedule to meet the 15% target for electricity from renewable sources (RES-E) for this year (surpassing an EU target of 13.1% by 2010 addressed to Ireland under Directive 2001/77/EC.) Indeed, based on reasonable load growth figures and reasonable capacity factors Ireland has already met, or is close to meeting, our national target. This will be confirmed later in the year. In the meantime, there is sufficient additional capacity scheduled to be installed throughout this year to ensure the target is achieved.
Ireland's target for electricity from renewable sources is a 2020 rather than a 2025 target. Under the new Renewable Energy Directive 2009/28/EC, Ireland must achieve 16% of all energy from renewable sources across the heat, transport and electricity sectors by 2020. Broadly speaking, it is intended that this will be achieved through 12% heat from renewable sources, 10% transport energy from renewable sources and 40% RES-E. In Budget 2009, the Government set a 40% RES-E target and it is estimated that between 4630MW and 5800MW of renewable generation will be required, depending on economic growth assumptions and demand projections, to ensure 40% of electricity consumption from renewable sources by 2020.
Under the grid connection offer process ‘Gate 3', 3900MW of offers are currently in the process of being issued to renewable generators. This amount of renewable generation is sufficient for the achievement of Ireland's RES-E target and with falling demand may even mean that the RES-E target is exceeded. The Gate process is commensurate with the achievement of our 2020 RES-E target. On the infrastructure side, EirGrid's ‘Grid 25' strategy provides the framework to build a more cost effective and efficient system to cater for the shift towards the integration of increasing amounts of renewable generation over time and will necessitate €4 billion investment in the grid.