Ireland gets Marine Renewable Energy Atlas

Ireland has launched an online mapping service for the marine renewable energy community.

The Marine Energy Atlas is a planning tool for resource assessment, identification of sites for development or understanding environmental and oceanographic interactions.

Through the Atlas, data are readily available about the wave and tidal resource, users and activities in the marine environment, marine energy infrastructures, protected sites, environmental and oceanographic monitoring, geology and seabed habitats.

Data from the Offshore Renewable Energy Development Plan (OREDP) are included. The OREDP was published by Ireland’s Department of Communications, Energy & Natural Resources (DCENR) in 2014 and provides the policy framework for the exploitation of wave, tidal and offshore wind and renewable energy resources in Ireland’s marine territory.

The Atlas was developed by the Marine Institute, in partnership with the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI), in addition to the 13 other organisations that provided data.