Where the Wind Blows - A sustainable future for the Atlantic Edge? Part II: Valentia Island.

Valentia Island seen from the mainland

Valentia Island sits just off the north western corner of the Iveragh Peninsula, its eastern and southern shores separated from the mainland only by a narrow channel. A bridge at Portmagee, a village off the main Ring of Kerry road, connects the island to the mainland, and from April to October a car ferry allows access to Valentia from Reenard Point just outside the village of Cahersiveen. Just like the Aran Islands, Valentia Island’s economy is dependent on tourism and the island is particularly famous, in addition to its scenery, for its fossilised tetrapod footprints (one of only three sites in the world) and its Transatlantic Cable Station which put the island on the international map some 150 years ago.

This second part of the story is about Valentia Island Energy Ltd. and its ambitious vision for the island’s future. The organisation is a joint enterprise between Valentia Island Energy Cooperative (VIEC) and Energy Cooperatives Ireland, and their story began around 2015, as Cormac Walsh of Energy Cooperatives Ireland recalls:

“I went to Valentia in 2015 with the idea of forming an energy cooperative on the island. They had invited me down just to have a workshop and brainstorm what we could potentially do on Valentia. Around the same time I was also working on the European GenComm project that explored the use of hydrogen as a major energy source across Europe, and the first thing that jumped out on me, when I was on the island, was the ferry. So I was down there, looking at the ferry and was being told that it needed to be replaced. So there I was, the GenComm project still fresh in my head, and I proposed the idea of transforming the ferry into a hydrogen vehicle, thinking they'd laugh me out of the room. They didn't. Instead they go: ‘Tell me more’.”

Reminder of the past

The reason for this unexpected open-mindedness, Cormac explains, can be found in Valentia’s history, namely in the famous Transatlantic Cable. Despite both North America and Europe having an established telegraph network by the mid 19th century, this network didn’t span the Atlantic Ocean and messages between the two continents had still to be carried back and forth by boat, which took considerable time. The vision of US entrepreneur Cyrus Field to connect the continents with an undersea cable earned initially widespread scepticism, and many experts claimed that the idea was an impossibility. Despite this lack of conviction and some failed attempts, the project succeeded eventually, and in 1866 an undersea cable connecting a small village in Newfoundland with Valentia Island cut the transmission time of messages between North America and Europe from around two weeks to mere minutes. This made the island Europe’s communication centre and brought considerable prosperity to Valentia. Cormac picks up the story:

“And it only ended in the sixties. They would love to repeat that and it's in their DNA to go: ‘No, we're not scared of new technology’. So Colum O'Connell (chairman of Valentia Island Energy Co-operative) and myself did a lot of work behind the scenes, and we organised a big community meeting, just to talk about energy and options for the island. We invited a few people to Valentia, some experts on renewable energies in general, and some on hydrogen in particular, as well as Elizabeth Johnson OBE from a company called Pure Energy Centre. She is from the Shetland Islands, from an island the same size as Valentia. She is fantastic. She is just an ordinary person who was living on an island that was dying. At the time she had a newborn baby and she just wanted to do something, so she would bring the baby to meetings and start talking to anybody who would listen, and bit by bit by bit she created something. Instead of a dying island, the place is now crawling with people from all over the world, different types of engineers, and people coming to learn. It's now a sustainable and thriving place. So she was at the first meeting on Valentia and told her story, and how similar her island is to Valentia, showing the potential, how energy can grow jobs, how it can reverse the decline. And because she was just telling her story, people resonated with it.

Then we had another big meeting with about 150 people. We had Ireland's only hydrogen car outside the community hall. We also had a big table for the kids, with little solar panels and wind turbines that produce enough power to run an electrolyser. From that you get the hydrogen, and then next to that, you've got a little connection that goes to a toy sports car and when you press the green button the sports car takes off. And the kids just went: ‘This is brilliant!’

Following this meeting we got a consultant to do an Energy Master Plan for the island, followed by a Hydrogen Feasibility Study a year later, which told the islanders a lot of interesting things, and we used that as a stepping stone. We had a big meeting to talk about the results, and about another 10 months later, we had another meeting in the community hall where we said: ‘Listen, we've done all these steps and now it’s time to do the big jump. Whichever elements of the Masterplan you think are feasible, you would need a vehicle in order to implement those. Forming a legal entity would allow you to do that.’ There were over a hundred people in the room and we asked: ‘Would you be in favour of setting up an energy cooperative?’ And a hundred percent said ‘yes’.”

The view from Valentia to the mainland

Then Energy Cooperatives Ireland took a step back to allow the community to decide on their first project as a cooperative. This however ended in a bit of a dilemma. Solar energy was ruled out because of a lacking grid connection, and the islanders also decided against wind turbines on the island because of the visual impact they would have, not only on the island but also the wider area, and the subsequent repercussions this could have on tourism. Cormac continues the story: 

“So we were stuck, stuck on with what, and how we could move forward. My little eureka moment came on another visit to Valentia: I was just looking out at sea, and I started wondering what's the potential for doing something out there? So we researched that and had conversations, and came up with the idea that if enough money could be found to do the studies in order to put in an application for an offshore wind farm, then we should do exactly that. If successful this could be a very lucrative endeavour, for both the island and us as a company. We [Energy Cooperatives Ireland] had saved up about € 250.000 over a 10 year period from our Community Studies work, small amounts of money each time we did a job, and we would say, someday we're going to invest this money in a really good project. And we decided, look, now is the time to risk that. So we did the work, had meetings with everybody concerned. We had meetings with many, many people, we didn't leave any stone unturned.”

And so VI Energy was born. This project is still ongoing and as before with the transatlantic cable, Valentia Island is thinking big. The envisaged offshore wind farm would be used to produce hydrogen to power a variety of applications on the island and the ferry. But Valentia wouldn’t stop there. To create a direct income stream, the island would be exporting hydrogen to Scotland and from there to Germany via a pipeline network which is already in planning. In this way the Valentia Island community could not only secure their energy needs while becoming carbon neutral, the revenue stream from the hydrogen export could secure the development of the island into the future, and create jobs on the island as well as the surrounding area. This would not only be a win-win, it would be a win-win-win.

Fogher Cliffs on Valentia Island

The examples of the Aran Islands and Valentia Island show that renewable energy can be at the core of community development to build “vibrant and lived-in rural places, and the potential to create quality jobs and sustain our shared environment” as the Irish Government phrased it in their Our Rural Future Development Policy 2021 -2025. At the same time visions like these will actively contribute to Ireland meeting its renewable energy and climate change targets. It is this vision of thriving rural communities and renewable energy installations going hand in hand that Energy Cooperatives Ireland is trying to make a reality. Cormac gives a short summary of their journey and achievements so far:

“We have worked on the ground with Irish communities in the energy transition space for over 12 years, including being mentors for the Western Region of the SEAI's Sustainable Energy Communities Programme. An example of this work is our setting up of the award winning Aran islands Community Energy Cooperative back in 2012. Our journey with Valentia Island began in 2015 with a number of large Community Hydrogen information meetings leading up to garnering their support for the Valentia Island Hydrogen Feasibility study report in 2019. This led to the 1GW Floating Wind to Hydrogen application with the Department of Housing in March 2020.”

Energy Cooperatives Ireland’s work rests on three main pillars which build on each other. First there is public education on renewable energies, which is a part of the SEAI’s Sustainable Energy Communities (SEC) programme. To take this education a step further Cormac and Lúgh have developed a programme for schools. Lúgh explains:

“We developed a STEM educational program, which is fantastic. It's exactly that concept with the table with the kids mentioned earlier. We developed this to a point where we brought it into schools. It's now a full STEM program for electricity, for solar, for hydrogen, and goes into national schools and the kids just love it. We had a trial run last year [2023] in two national schools, one on the island and one off the island. And it was a great success. You're beginning with the kids.”

The second pillar is “the low hanging fruit”, which allows individuals to upgrade their homes, including better insulation, installation of solar panels, and heating running on renewables.  This, in combination with the learning experience, builds a foundation for a holistic energy transition in the community, which is the third pillar: large scale projects benefiting the whole community and which, beside community support, require expertise and money, two things that commercial developers can provide at scale much more easily than communities. Cormac describes the process: 

“Over the last two years we have engaged positively at the highest levels with some of the world's largest offshore wind developers, all of whom would be deemed suitable partners from an Irish Government perspective and also - very important from our standpoint - are interested in working in partnership with our communities. We would go into partnership with such a developer. The idea would be that we approach a developer, and, if agreeable, the developer would then buy a certain amount of equity in the project. From their point of view, they don't jump in at the early stage. When they come in much of the groundwork is already done. Their model goes something like: ‘We'll buy 20 percent of that and see how we go, it might go nowhere because a lot of projects don't come to fruition’. So they only risk a certain amount of money in it, and that's fine.”

What the next decade will bring nobody can say for certain, but Cormac and Lúgh believe in unique opportunities that just wait to be grabbed, opportunities that would bring benefits locally and nationally, as Cormac describes:  

“Offshore wind and hydrogen is a fantastic opportunity for Scotland and for Ireland, there's no reason why the governments should be adopting a kicking-the-can-down-the-road attitude. It's just enormous the more you think about it, but unless you're on a priority list for this stuff, for the turbines, all the ancillary stuff and supply chains, you lose out. There are other countries coming in and the capacity is very limited. This will become a massive market, which will become more obvious in the next year or so through Sh2mrock, and probably by 2030 we will have hydrogen produced in large utility wind farms.” 

The Clock Tower at Knightstown Harbour

About a century ago the novel idea of a communication cable under the Atlantic Ocean brought prosperity to a small island on Ireland’s west coast. It seems like history might repeat itself, only this time there is the chance that this prosperity could be shared by the entire western seaboard, and indeed the whole country. Communities are becoming aware of the opportunities and are ready to step up, all that is needed is a supportive framework. Let’s give the last word to Lúgh:

“I think it's a huge success story. Nothing's perfect, but it's amazing the work that's being done, the education that has happened with people in communities around the country is fantastic.”

Read Part I: The Aran Islands

Acknowledgements: This story was originally compiled as a case study for the Earning Local Support Academy (ELSA). A big thank you goes to Cormac Walsh and Lúgh Ó Braonáin for giving up their time to be interviewed.

Disclaimer: Quotes have been edited for clarity and readability