Tracing agenda setting and associated conditions for deploying offshore wind power at scale: A case study of (lack of) policy change in the Republic of Ireland

Many countries now hold very ambitious plans for increasing the production of energy from offshore wind in the coming decades. Realising these ambitions requires concerted, often innovative, public policy action in several administrative domains. In order to achieve a better understanding of the challenges of designing, legitimating and implementing offshore wind policy, we argue that close analysis of instances where offshore wind ambition has not yet translated into substantial deployment is needed. The Republic of Ireland, a small European Union member state, provides such an example. The objectives of this paper are twofold. Firstly, we offer a historical explanation for why Ireland has, as of 2021, no commercial offshore wind power in Irish waters despite having a vast resource and attempted policy reforms from the early 2000s. We employ the Multiple Streams Framework to interrogate a set of offshore wind power policies that includes marine planning legislation, price support, and grid connection and development policy. We consider why the Irish government failed to pass the policies and legislative reforms deemed necessary to support offshore wind power during the opening of a policy window, and how a confluence of factors ultimately displaced offshore wind power from the political agenda for many years after the policy window. We draw data from parliamentary debates, legislative and policy documents, technical reports commissioned by state agencies and advocacy groups, and semi structured key informant interviews. Secondly, we discuss the significance of the case study findings for general efforts to prioritize technology-specific policy innovations for offshore wind power in the context of national and regional energy transitions towards net-zero targets. Our case study highlights the dynamics of policy spillovers between the energy policy, economic and trade policy, and marine planning policy domains, and the variable timeframes required for developing and coordinating politically acceptable and technically feasible policy solutions.