Ireland’s Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment (DCEE) aims to launch consultations on the sixth round of the Renewable Energy Support Scheme (RESS 6) as early as next week, a senior official said.
Philip Newsome, principal officer for renewable electricity at the DCEE, told delegates at the 2026 Wind Energy Ireland conference in Dublin that RESS 6 will be the first auction round to incorporate non-price criteria required under the European Union’s Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA).
Price will remain the dominant factor in the auction, Newsome said, but resilience will be weighted at 5%, while energy system integration will carry a weighting of between 10% and 25%.
The new requirements under the NZIA present “an opportunity to evolve RESS, as something we want to do anyway,” Newsome told the conference. “It’s a big change from the world we’ve known for the last five years, but hopefully a change for good.”
Ireland’s wind sector is hoping the sixth auction, expected to take place in the autumn of 2026, will be the largest to date for onshore wind capacity.
Wind Energy Ireland (WEI) chief executive Noel Cunniffe said there is around 1.3 gigawatts of onshore wind projects ready to secure offtake agreements, either through RESS or via the corporate power purchase agreement market.
The previous RESS 5 auction was widely viewed as disappointing by industry participants, after only 219 megawatts of projects were awarded support contracts.
