The Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (RESS) is one of the major Government policies to help deliver on the ambition in the Climate Action Plan 2021 of up to 80% renewable electricity by 2030. The RESS supports communities in a variety of ways including through a separate category for community projects and a mandatory community benefit fund for every project supported in the scheme. The Climate Action Plan includes a target for at least 500MW of renewable electricity to be supplied by local community-based projects; to reach this target it is estimated that at least 100 community projects will be needed. In order to ensure such a pipeline of community projects I have allocated €2 million in capital funding in Budget 2022 to the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI).
This funding will enable SEAI to deploy a range of capacity-building supports including toolkit guides to assist communities in developing renewable projects. The first four of these, covering grid connection, Solar PV, the planning process and onshore wind, are available on the SEAI website, with more to be developed in the coming months. A trusted intermediary service is also now in place to assist community projects. A trusted advisory service, for expert financial, grid and planning advice, and financial enabling grant supports are to be delivered in quarter two of 2022. This advisory service will also provide feasibility studies for all community projects to assess their planning and grid connection methods.
A supportive spatial planning framework for onshore renewable electricity generation development, including community energy projects, is critical to meeting the targets set out in Climate Action Plan. 2021. The SEAI is currently undertaking a review and update of the methodology for Local Authority Renewable Electricity Strategies to provide a best practice approach to identifying and assessing renewable energy resources in spatial planning at local authority level.
