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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Breakfast Business with Enterprise Ireland on Newstalk.
Chapter 2: What controversial statement did Donald Trump make about climate change?
Donald Trump told the UN last week that climate change and decarbonisation were the greatest frauds of the 21st century. He also hates renewable energy and wind turbines, which he refers to as windmills.
But the business and scientific community have totally ignored him, including my next guest, who runs a company that prepares land for the installation of turbines, as well as fixing them if they break down. And much to Trump's chagrin, he's expanding and hiring more people. He's Darren Sherry and he's the chief executive of Gail Tech in County Cavan. Good morning, Darren. Good morning, Joel.
Thanks for having me on the line. Tell us a little bit more about what Gail Tech does because you've got tentacles all over the renewable energy space.
Yeah, so we've been in the business for 25 years this year. We do almost everything you can imagine on a renewable project. So we develop projects and sell electricity. We provide consultant services to other people that want to build their own projects. We measure the solar and wind resource before building projects. We asset manage those projects when they're built.
Later on, we physically maintain those assets and refurbish the components when they get to end of life so that we can extend the life on the turbines. We're working in various markets. We work obviously in our home market in Ireland. We've been active here for pretty much the 25 years, but also in East and South Africa. We've been working since 2010. We're announcing today the 65 jobs.
They are very much focused on entering the UK with a wider service offering there. While the challenges in the US in policy are there, the UK is in a more progressive place in terms of opening up the market for renewable energy, particularly onshore, solar and wind in England.
Do you also store energy in some form?
We do. Well, we have a number of projects in planning with battery energy storage. We probably also have a vision that beyond battery energy storage, that Ireland has an opportunity to do something with our excess power.
So that is both curtailed energy in the short term and in the long term when we've probably fulfilled our own needs, that we have an opportunity to use the power that we can generate that other countries in Europe maybe can't generate because we've such a fantastic resource available. that we can do something with that. And as part of that, we're focusing on e-fuels.
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Chapter 3: How does Galetech contribute to the renewable energy sector?
Look, just looking at the most recent res auctions, which were published last week, we're seeing prices there at 9.6 cent per kilowatt hour for the next 15 years. And I think critically to look at those numbers, 70% of that number is not indexed. So it will be the same number in 15 years time as it is today.
And is that what the Irish government is going to pay energy providers?
Yes.
So it's a contract for difference. So effectively, the project is guaranteed that number. But equally, if the market price for electricity goes over that number, the developer will not benefit from that. The Irish state will benefit from that.
OK, so the Irish state could, in fact, get some very cheap energy because I was looking at the chart yesterday, which suggested that Irish manufacturing or kind of mass use of energy is paying the second highest in Europe. Only the Brits are paying more than we are.
Absolutely. And we see consumers all the time, you know, many of our clients are consumers who want to develop their own wind or solar on their projects. You know, they're paying north of 20 cents per kilowatt hour. And as we said, the most recent renewable energy projects are selling their power under 10 cents per kilowatt hour for 15 years non-index length.
So it makes renewables extremely competitive in that space.
Now, I believe you're building a pipeline to connect onshore with offshore wind turbines.
Well, we're building a pipeline of projects, the majority of which are onshore. We have a little bit of exposure to the offshore market in Ireland here. We're not necessarily developing a pipeline. We're developing a group of projects. So in the Irish market, we have about 1,000 megawatts of pipeline of projects coming through.
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Chapter 4: What job opportunities is Galetech creating and where?
But it's going to take a little while to work through the system to actually see the improvements on the ground.
And what is the biggest part of your business? The repair and maintenance part?
In terms of people, the repair and maintenance part, so about 50%. So we're currently 150 staff. This announcement today is going to bring us to 215 staff. About half of that staff work in the repair, maintenance and asset management of wind projects in the UK and Ireland. And the other half are working across consultancy, measurement, general support services into the renewable energy sector.
Chapter 5: How does Galetech plan to expand its services in the UK?
So about half of our overall business is in physical maintenance and termites.
And Donald Trump says that your wind turbines, or windmills as he calls them, is killing all the birds. How do you sleep at night, Darren?
Well, thankfully, as I mentioned earlier, we do almost four years of feasibility studies, extensive bird studies, etc., before we build a project. So we won't build a project if we did feel that it was going to do any harm. I suppose there are challenges in the sentiment coming from the US for the US itself. Thankfully, we have no exposure to that market, so it's not bothering us for the moment.
Yes, indeed, because the Danish company Ćrsted, which is one of the biggest renewable and wind turbine companies in the world, was told to stop completing a project which was halfway done in New Jersey and drop everything. And that cost them a lot of money on their share price as well, didn't it?
Absolutely. You have to have huge sympathy for a business that has invested in good faith into a market where the policy changes halfway through that investment. But as we said, thankfully, Galtech, we're quite active in Europe, quite active in Africa, but the US has never been an attractive market to us.
And those 65 jobs that you're hiring, are they going to be in County Cavan?
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Chapter 6: What role does energy storage play in Galetech's projects?
They're going to be across Ireland, mostly regional Ireland. The head office is in Cavan, so the majority will be there. But we're working from home, all of those things. Lots of people working from lots of interesting locations these days.
Darren, best of luck with it. That's Darren Sherry, the chief executive of Gale Tech Wind Turbine.