East Antrim
East Antrim has 17 MW of clean power (all onshore wind) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 15,000 homes. When the wires are too full to carry the power, Britain pays wind farms to switch off instead. No wind farm here is paid that way — almost all of it goes to wind farms in Scotland. Northern Ireland is on the all-Ireland grid, so Britain's grid bottlenecks do not reach bills here in the same way. There is also 56 MW of wind running here on the local network. If that gets switched off, no national record shows it.
Ranks 208 of 650 for clean power approved and not built.
What is stuck, and why
| Project and developer | Tech | Size | Why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| Power Generation Development in IslandmageeHeron Storage Limited | Battery | 100 MW | Waiting 3.1 years for a planning decisionWho can move it: Mid and East Antrim Council · planning ref LA02/2023/1577/F |
| Quarterland Road, Islandmagee - Battery StorageSolo Renewables Ltd | Battery | 75 MW | Approved 3 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref LA02/2023/1283/F |
| Unshinagh Wind Farm Development in CarnloughRenewable Energy Systems (RES) | Onshore wind | 59 MW51,000 homes | Waiting 4.6 years for a planning decisionWho can move it: Mid and East Antrim Council · planning ref LA02/2021/1205/F |
| Carnbuck Wind FarmRES Limited | Onshore wind | 50 MW44,000 homes | Waiting 3.4 years for a planning decisionWho can move it: Mid and East Antrim Council · planning ref SPD/2023/0951/F |
| Carnalbanagh WindfarmABO Wind NI | Onshore wind | 21 MW18,000 homes | Waiting 9.1 years for a planning decisionWho can move it: Mid and East Antrim Council · planning ref LA02/2017/0594/F |
| Ballykeel Wind FarmWind NI Ltd | Onshore wind | 16 MW14,000 homes | Approved 10 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref F/2013/0244/F |
| Factory Extension in BallymenaStream BioEnergy Ltd | Anaerobic Digestion | 15 MW | Approved 4 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref LA02/2021/0492/F |
Plus 2 smaller projects — see the full seat page.
Compared with its neighbours
| Constituency | Approved, not built | Running | Paid to switch off |
|---|---|---|---|
| East Antrim | 17 MW | 56 MW | not visible |
| Belfast North | 0.2 MW | 3.8 MW | not visible |
| South Antrim | 111 MW | 88 MW | not visible |
| North Antrim | 22 MW | 181 MW | not visible |
South Antrim next door has 111 MW waiting, more than East Antrim's 17 MW.
The rest of the briefing
- Every approval each project still needs, and which of them the public can see
- What building them would mean here — community payments, business rates and construction work
- Drafted parliamentary questions and letters, filled in with this seat's figures
- 2 story angles for local reporting
- A two-page PDF, and a newsroom edition with the references and who to call
Everything above needs no account, and neither does the full seat page, the method or this constituency's raw data. The account covers the packaged briefing and its PDF, and nothing else.