Ireland urged to build €1bn green energy sector with 20,000 engineers

IRELAND could develop a €1 billion green industry by specialising in the education of the 20,000 service engineers that will be desperately needed across Europe in the next 10 years, a European wind expert has said.

Siemens head of sales for EMEA North, Tom Krojgaard, said there is a specific educational market that Ireland could capitalise on as no one college or university is specialising in this area.

Letterkenny Institute of Technology (LKIT) has already announced its intention to establish itself as the country’s first ‘wind academy’ and has built a training turbine for student service engineers.

“Given that there is no real systematic effort to develop these skills and competencies, Ireland must look on this as a real opportunity, not least because you have a very bright, young population and can easily build on this competent resource,” Mr Krojgaard said.

“Siemens is actively pursuing the Desertec vision, which is that by 2050 north Africa could deliver all of Europe’s electricity through wind energy and concentrated solar power plants. This is a real technical opportunity in the eyes of Europe but nobody is really thinking about this small little corner of the western edge of Europe, where you have among the best wind resources in the world. Simply, why don’t you decide to think big and build a 3,000 MW power plant that would be connected to the European super-grid? It is by no means impossible and would take around five years to do. The skills and the resources are there for you to do this and it is just about grabbing the opportunity.”

In Denmark, with a similar population size to Ireland, the wind sector employs 25,000 people in Denmark, compared to 1,500 employed here. There are 150 manufacturing and supply companies in Denmark, with just 10 in Ireland, eight of which are foreign-based companies.