The company, which is owned by private equity house Ion Equity, has just 67MW of wind capacity but chief executive Tim Cowhig told the Sunday Tribune that it planned to become the number one player in wind energy here.

If completed, SWS's expansion plans would mean the company would be capable of generating over 5% of the state's current electricity needs using its wind farms.

He said that although the company planned to concentrate on onshore wind farms, it was keeping an eye on the development of offshore projects such as the proposed Oriel Windfarm off the coast of Co Louth.

"We have a lot of the skills you need to go offshore inhouse but I believe that we won't see much serious offshore development in Ireland until after 2012 and electricity interconnection with Britain, " he said. "We definitely have our eyes on offshore but we want to build up a strong balance sheet first".

Cowhig said the government should introduce incentives to promote offshore developments, given the vast potential of wind energy in Ireland.

"Offshore is something the Irish government should look at and we should become world leaders in it. But we also have to develop onshore as it is cheaper and there is spare capacity there."

Cowhig also said the company hoped to gain a foothold in the emerging combined heat and power (CHP) market, where businesses burn biomass to generate their own on-site heat and power.

SWS has taken a first step towards entering this market with the opening of a sludge-drying facility at Youghal, Co Cork, which transforms sludge from pharmaceutical industries in Cork into pellets which fuel CHP installations abroad.

"The problem, though, is that there are two issues holding back biomass. The first is pricing and the other is fuel supply, " said Cowhig. "People will only use biomass if it is a sound economic proposition."

He said, however, that although SWS believed the CHP market was ten years behind the wind energy sector in terms of development, "there's lots of opportunities between now and then".

Cowhig envisages that SWS will eventually provide and operate CHP units for industry, receiving payments from its clients for the heat and electricity produced.

He said the company would likely use a mixture of wood from Irish forests and industrial sludge to power the units.

Asked whether this could this attract protests from the country's anti-incineration lobby, Cowhig said people had to distinguish between mass incineration and biomass combustion.

"I'm against mass incineration but there are certain residue streams which are best dealt with through combustion. The days of landfilling waste or discharging it into streams are over."