Health & Safety: Challenges for Offshore Renewables

The further development of offshore renewable energy projects in Irish waters will soon be underway. This will pose unique health and safety challenges not usually encountered by Irish contractors. To help contractors prepare, our Health and Safety team consider some key issues including those encountered in other countries.

What you need to know

• The development of offshore renewable energy projects poses unique health and safety challenges.
• Companies working in the offshore renewables sector in Ireland will have to comply with the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work 2005, as amended, and associated Regulations. Other legislation such as marine safety legislation may also apply.
• The Irish Health & Safety Authority has relatively little experience in the offshore renewables sector and has only recently published guidance for the sector.
• International experience provides valuable insight to what the challenges involve. There are several international health and safety organisations that provide useful guidance and other resources.

The consenting process for offshore renewable energy projects is well underway in Ireland. Consent is also being sought for the de-commissioning of Ireland’s first and only offshore wind farm, Arklow Bank. The focus on offshore wind will lead to unprecedented levels of construction activity in Ireland in this uniquely challenging area. Owing to the current lack of experience with offshore development in Ireland, there will be health and safety challenges for both developers and regulatory authorities.

During our webinar available on-demand, we previously discussed some of the latest advancements, strategies, and best practices in maintaining health and safety within the energy sector generally. This included a discussion of some of the challenges for offshore renewables. For example:

• The logistical challenges faced by developers
• Active engagement between developers and the Health and Safety Authority (HSA)
• Insurance risk profiling, and
• Recent trends in court decisions.

In this article, we focus on more practical issues for developers and contractors of offshore renewable energy projects to consider.

Irish legislation

Irish health and safety legislation for the built environment sector primarily consists of the following:

• Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005, as amended (the 2005 Act)
• Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (General Application) Regulations 2007, as amended
• Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (Construction) Regulations 2013, as amended

This legislation also applies to the offshore sector. It remains to be seen whether the Irish legislature will introduce new / amended legislation to address the unique challenges of offshore development.

Contractors carrying out offshore works should also consider whether marine legislation might also apply to them. For example, owners / operators of ships may have health and safety, and reporting obligations under the Merchant Shipping (Investigation of Marine Accidents) Act 2025 (the 2025 Act).

The regulatory authority under the 2005 Act is the HSA. The regulatory authority under the 2025 Act is the Marine Accident Investigation Unit (MAIU).

Challenges for offshore

Statistics prepared by the International Marine Contractors’ Association (IMCA) show that the main causes of ‘lost time incidents’ in offshore workplaces in 2024 were:

Line of fire

International experience of offshore development is that ‘line of fire’ gives rise to the most frequent breach of health and safety legislation resulting in near misses and workplace incidents. This means situations where workers expose themselves to danger by the type of work they do. Where hazards regularly occur as part of a specific job, the worker is in the ‘line of fire’. It is critical that all tasks in the workplace are subject to risk assessment in order to identify the risks to workers. Once risks are identified, policies and procedures must be put in place to try to ensure those risks are eliminated or reduced insofar as is practicable before work is carried out. The contractor should also seek to improve workers’ understanding of the risks and effectively share learnings.

To try to reduce the risks of being in the line of fire, one industry practice is to implement an assessment of how comfortable or uncomfortable a worker is when performing a specific task. If a worker is uncomfortable, this should be reviewed. Relevant questions might include:

• What is different about the task?
• Has anything been overlooked?
• What is making the worker uncomfortable?
• What are the concerns?
• What support or resources would make the worker feel comfortable?
• What keeps the worker safe while performing the task?

Questioning could also be implemented during tender reviews, contract negotiation stage, project meetings, etc. Questions that might be asked at those stages could include:

• What is the contractor most worried about?
• Is anything ambiguous or confusing?
• What would be the signals that tell the contractor its systems or processes are being strained, tested, or challenged?
• What situations or changes would trigger escalation?
• What critical trade-offs have been made?

Other common risks

Other unique offshore risks that have been identified internationally include:

• The transfer of persons from ships / vessels to offshore structures. For example, where there is no secure walkway from a ship to an offshore structure, this can increase the risk of the person falling into the sea. ‘Walk to work’ systems have been implemented internationally to reduce this risk. These are engineered systems designed to reduce this risk.
• Working in enclosed spaces such as within turbine towers. For example, in some offshore locations, there is a risk of toxic gases building up within wind turbine towers. This can pose a health and safety risk to persons entering or working within a turbine tower.

The specific challenges of offshore development is something that will form part of the risk profiling carried out by insurers, as well as the HSA. Insurers may also factor in any concerns they have with developers using technology that they are not familiar with, eg offshore wind turbines manufactured in other jurisdictions such as China.

International guidance

In addition to protecting the health and safety of workers, compliance with industry standards and best practice guidance may also benefit developers and contractors when obtaining insurance cover by improving their risk profile. It is estimated that compliance with best practice guidance can reduce insurance premiums by up to 25 to 30%.

Although the Irish Health & Safety Authority has just recently published its own guidance for the offshore renewables sector, contractors might also consider international guidance or safety standards to assist them. Some examples of organisations that provide statistics, reports, guidance, etc are IMCA and the G+ Global Offshore Wind Health and Safety Organisation (G+).

IMCA is a UK-based international trade association for the marine contracting industry. It is a not-for-profit organisation with members from the offshore oil, gas and renewable energy industries around the world. It provides its members with health and safety statistics, guidance, training, and reports, as well as other tools to assist with offshore health and safety.

G+ is run in partnership with the Energy Institute (London). It reports incident data, develops good practice guidance, and provides health and safety design workshops. G+ has assisted the Energy Institute in developing the SafetyOn ‘Wind Turbine Safety Rules’ (WTSRs) as a model set of safety rules and procedures. The WTSRs have been reported by Wind Energy Ireland (WEI) as being the safety management system in place in the majority of wind farms in the UK and Ireland. They are acknowledged by the UK’s Health and Safety Executive as the best practice system of safety management.

Conclusion

The Irish offshore renewable energy sector is in its infancy. While there is a valuable body of international experience and guidance, there is relatively little Irish regulatory experience or guidance. The 2005 Act will however apply to the offshore sector and the HSA has considerable experience in regulating the onshore renewable energy sector.

Developers and contractors should comply with the 2005 Act and its associated Regulations, while also ensuring the safety system is tailored to the risks associated with working in an offshore environment. They should also consider whether any other legislation applies to them such as if they own or control ships used to carry out works in the marine environment. The HAS’s recently published guidance should also be referred to.

For more information, please contact a member of our Health and Safety team.

The content of this article is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute legal or other advice.