History offers lessons to help us solve  renewable energy puzzle

That two-year agreement with Ibn Saud cost Holmes £5,000 and although unsuccessful it didn’t dent his enthusiasm for his cause. 

In a letter to his wife, Holmes wrote: "I personally believe that there will be developed an immense oil field running from Kuwait right down the mainland coast of eastern Arabia.” 

Time was to prove him more correct than he’d ever imagined.

Fast forward a hundred years, to the autumn of 2023 and Sean Kelly, MEP for Ireland South is delivering his concluding remarks to a conference he has sponsored at the European Parliament on the topic of ‘Powering up Europe: Unlocking Ireland's offshore wind potential to help achieve EU climate targets’.  

His conclusions are both concerning and optimistic. 

“While we have problems,” acknowledges Kelly, “I think we have the resources, the wherewithal and above all, the people to help us deliver. Ultimately, we have to impress upon people is that anything you do to get rid of fossil fuels and develop renewables you are actually saving the planet for future generations, your kids and grandkids. That is the key message. Everything else is secondary.”

 In an earlier contribution, three agreed truths had emerged. Pierre Tardieu, Chief Policy Officer of Wind Europe, (an association promoting the use of wind power in Europe), demonstrated how demand for electricity is expected to double between now and 2050 and secondly, how all new supply to plug the gap must come from renewable sources, especially offshore wind farms.

At present only 32 gigawatts (GW) of power are generated from offshore wind, which meets only about 3% of Europe’s electricity demand. To give this context, the target for ‘North Sea’ wind produced by a triumvirate of the UK, Norway and the European Union is 120GW by 2030 and this quadruples again by 2050. 

To give this even more context, a single GW is equal to the power produced by 1.3 million racehorses. The final agreed truth is that Ireland is a beautifully positioned geographic windbreaker that stands selflessly between wild Atlantic gales and the power-hungry citizens of Northern Europe.

A colour-coded map from the conference of the strength of wind currents from the north Atlantic paints a more eloquent reality than many thousands of words. Effectively, Ireland could be to wind in 2023 what Saudi Arabia was to oil one hundred years ago. 

If Frank Holmes were alive today and hunting wind instead of oil, he’d be telling his wife: “I personally believe that there will be developed an immense offshore wind farm running down the west coast of Ireland, from Malin Head to Cape Clear Island.” 

 So, the puzzle that Sean Kelly has asked his conference to solve is this; How can the value of this huge natural resource be unlocked?

The puzzle:

Kelly’s interest in solving the renewable power problem is not newly born. He recalls his various parliamentary positions over the last decade and the dawning realisation he observed in many meetings that the climate crisis was a real one. 

“I said I had to play my part in ensuring that we can overcome all that. And of course, as time went by, I began to realise that there was a big opportunity for Ireland to develop renewable energy even more and to help out Europe by making it available to them in due course.” 

The phrase ‘even more’ is delicately put and deliberately loaded. The current climate action plan in Ireland calls for 5GW of new offshore wind energy to be delivered by 2030 but this already looks in jeopardy. Eirgrid only held its first offshore wind auction earlier this year and awarded just 3GW concessions and Sean Kelly is adamant that auctions are a waste of time without concrete and achievable plans for project and product delivery. Unsurprisingly for a former President of the GAA he reaches for a sporting metaphor to illustrate his frustration at the speed of travel.

“We are not moving quick enough. We’re a small bit like a football or a hurling team. Vast potential but who are not getting the results because they are not dedicated enough and I think we are a bit like that in our approach to renewable energy in Ireland.” 

With an almost limitless supply of wind off our coastline and an unsatiated demand for the end product, electricity, the conditions are optimum to attract walls of private and public capital into the market in the same way ‘Big Oil’ moved into Arabia in the decades after pioneers like Holmes had pointed the direction. While the funding is there, every stage of the ‘offshore turbine to electric kettle’ supply chain is fraught with expensive obstacles, political, economic and legislative. Kelly outlines the challenge.

“There's a lot of interest in developing offshore wind farms, but there are two major obstacles,” he says. “One is the planning and permitting. It’s a fact that we’ve had no wind farm given planning permission in Ireland in the last twelve months. When it is one of our best assets, that totally makes no sense and we’d want to address that in two ways.

"Number one, by ensuring that the planning authority will have enough resources to make decisions in quick time. And if they don't, I think that the project is shown to be in the public interest it should be given permission by default. That will speed it up, and will also help to get rid of nimbyism, where people become objectors to any projects in their own area.” 

He acknowledges deficiencies in communication and engagement at community level which has left a vacuum in which scaremongers and misinformation can thrive. But he also knows that if you have to eat an elephant its best to do it in small bites.

“Every constituency should have targets for decarbonizing their building stock. And then the government itself should not be allowed even about post their five-year term objectives. They should be asked to say what they're going to do in year one, year two, three and four for their term in government. 

"I think that type of focus is badly needed, because it's too easy altogether to be talking about ‘we have wonderful potential of West Coast of Ireland, we're going to be global leaders exporting wind energy all over the world. We’re going to be great.'  But, as I said, you have to put in the training if you want to get the cup. That means start delivering and taking all the measures necessary to do so from the get-go for the next government." 

In an earlier life, Kelly famously solved another intractable problem by opening up Croke Park to the ‘garrison games’ of rugby and soccer. When he reflects back in a later life, which does he think will have proven the most difficult task. Opening Croke Park for rugby or the west of Ireland for offshore windfarms?

“Opening Croke Park was probably more immediately difficult because there was a necessity to get it done within a set timeframe. So, we had to give it everything and thankfully we got it done. In actual fact, it should be somewhat similar here, because we should set a time limit as well. We could do an enormous amount of work to ensure that we will be a major hub plenty of jobs and also save the environment for our future generations.” 

Frank Holmes eventually became so expert at locating oil that he was honoured in Arabic with the title of ‘Abu Naft’ – The Father of Oil. Sean Kelly would probably pull on your bad ankle with his heaviest hurl if you offered a similar honorific.

But somebody in Europe has to become the ‘Father or Mother of Wind’ and quickly. There’s no time to waste. Père du vent ? Mutter des windes? Or even, an aithair na gaoithe?