Following the provisional results of Ireland’s Renewable Electricity Support Scheme 4 (RESS4) auction, announced on 9 September, the power analytics provider Aurora Energy Research has identified several key highlights.
RESS4 was surprisingly successful, procuring 960 MW of solar PV and 374 MW of onshore wind at an average generation-weighted price of €96.85/MWh. This success was likely due to the expansion of eligibility requirements, allowing projects under judicial review to enter the auction,
After the lack of success in RESS3, the improvement in RESS4 makes the CAP24 (Climate Action Plan 2024) capacity targets, as well as both the CCAC (Climate Change Advisory Council) and EU carbon budgets, seem more achievable.
Qualification volumes were still lower than expected, with the original procurement target of 2500 GWh to 4500 GWh reduced to 1300 GWh to 2500 GWh prior to the auction, resulting in a (provisionally) successful procurement of 2071 GWh.
Ireland is still falling short of the 80% renewable generation target by 1.9 TWh, assuming offshore wind projects deliver as expected, which is prone to its own uncertainties. This puts pressure on Purchase Agreement backed projects and the early delivery of RESS5 to meet the generation target.
Steph Unsworth, senior Research Associate at Aurora Energy Research commented: “This auction was surprisingly successful, procuring four large scale onshore wind assets amounting to 1.1TWh, despite concerns over the reduction to the auction cap price rendering onshore wind uneconomic.
“Despite a lower all-projects average price than [at] RESS3, an average price of €104.76/MWh for solar PV and €90.47/MWh for onshore wind indicates that this auction cleared close to the respective cap prices for these technologies. “
