Reshoring of renewable energy manufacturing for regions and smaller nations : an exploration of offshore wind Northern Ireland

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Comerford, David and Connolly, Kevin and Crummey, Ciara (2024) Reshoring of renewable energy manufacturing for regions and smaller nations : an exploration of offshore wind Northern Ireland. Discussion paper. University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.

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Abstract

In order to combat climate change many nations have committed to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions with the development of renewable energy key in meeting these objectives. At the same time these nations see the development of renewables as and opportunity to ‘reindustrialise for the 21st century’ with many placing emphasis on the reshoring of manufacturing via the onshoring of parts of the renewable energy supply chains, to increase economic benefits from green investment. While this is a goal for nations of all sizes, due to the specialities needed in the development technologies, in reality reshoring is much easier for larger nations. Smaller nations are limited by their economic structures and labour force. In this paper, using offshore wind in Northern Ireland as a case study, we investigate the issues around onshoring of renewables for small nations and regions. For this we use the particular case of Northern Ireland, a self-governing region of the UK; but the method we propose is general and could be carried out by decision makers in any small nation or region. We firstly carry out a structural analysis of the economy of Northern Ireland and identify synergies with the offshore wind supply chain, and then we model the economic impacts of onshoring key components of this supply chain. Overall, we find that there is the potential for sizeable economic benefits, in NI’s case mostly in the onshoring of foundations; but our results extend and in general many smaller regions will be able to identify their own specific opportunities in onshoring renewables manufacturing.

ORCID iDs

Comerford, David ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5541-736X, Connolly, Kevin ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2333-2211 and Crummey, Ciara;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)