It's SNAPP for 2020.

The feast of Christ the King today marks the end of the Church year, and we start to think in terms of the coming new one. For myself 2020 will be make or break with what I am now calling SNAPP - the Sherkin-Nazaré Alternative Power Project. I have modified the name in this way to give it a more explicit Sherkin dimension, for various reasons but above all because, besides being my home, this is such a splendid microcosm in which to set about applying the technologies we envisage.

However my mind was concentrated on the matter by the visit to Sherkin yesterday of our Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Simon Coveney, as well as the Minister for the Gaeltacht and the Islands, Seán Kyne. I also met our new MEP for Ireland South, Billy Kelleher, a couple of nights ago in Cork. It is one of the beauties of living in a small country that one has a better chance of effective access to senior politicians. The rest of this blog was written as an outline of SNAPP, with a view to sounding out what effective political advice and support may be forthcoming....

The day-to-day problems of island living have very much to do with transport on both land and sea. While access for mainland-based vehicles, vans etc, is difficult and expensive, it is rarely practical for an individual person to run an expensive vehicle on an island, and neither would it be doing much good taking up space in the car park by the sea on the mainland. Fiona and I have been happily living without a car for six years now, but this is much easier with the children grown up and a pensioner’s free travel pass.

Bangers' End

What happens in practice is that old bangers are drawn out to islands to die; visitors are treated to lungfuls of foul exhaust as they walk up the hill from the pier, which is usually congested with them, and when they finally conk out they are inclined to litter our beautiful landscape. Meanwhile we are dependent on an unreliable old island bus, while we do not know how it is to be replaced when it finally conks out.

     Undoubtedly in general electric power will eventually replace internal combustion engines, but not necessarily in the extremely expensive and flashy vehicles offered by big industry, and preferably without lithium-ion batteries. We need very basic and rugged electric vehicles that can be maintained here on island - preferably a fleet of them owned and operated by a coop. They would be available for its members to drive, while overseen by someone charged with monitoring their use and location.

With regard to lithium-ion batteries, which are expensive, messy to produce, of quite limited durability and difficult to recycle, I would bet on hydrogen fuel cells for powering the future. While there is at this stage a wealth of scientific research and knowledge on all alternatives to oil, practical applications are falling very short. There is something that could be done to ameliorate the situation quickly, radically and relatively cheaply, which is to fit every diesel engine with a hydrogen generator, which would reduce their consumption of diesel oil by up to 30% and radically clean up their emissions. It is with the development and production of such units that SNAPP will most probably set to work.

     Many of the same considerations that apply to vehicles also do so to boats, though of course there are whole new dimensions involved. With regard to electric power in a sailing boat, there is the advantage that batteries can be recharged (or hydrogen produced) by the power of the sails transmitted through the propellor and electric motor functioning as a generator. It hardly needs to be said how attractive the idea of quiet, pollution and smell free electric power is for boats.

In the case of both my associate in Portugal, Alec Lammas, and myself, our boats are the prime focus of our interest in electric drives. Alec owns a small steel trading schooner that he built himself, and I have a 50 year-old Illingworth schooner, the Anna M, that I am renovating with new laminated ribs. Both vessels are fairly ideal for the reach between West Cork and Galicia. Having cruised extensively between Scotland, the south of Spain, Rome, Venezuela and the Caribbean, my main interest now would be to use the Anna M as a test bed for various forms of alternative power and to demonstrate their utility. While Alec is very busy in the boatyard at Nazaré, he has a fine workshop in which he has been experimenting with hydrogen and electric motors. Here on Sherkin a similar workshop could also function as a place to experiment with and try out different techniques, while also training technicians to service them.

     The critical considerations for electric power are always going to be where and how is all this electricity going to be generated, and how will the power be stored and distributed? Our islands have multiple potential sources of renewable energy available, and surely there is massive potential for ‘cottage industry’ hydrogen production. Maybe farmers in the future will produce it much as they do milk today. Techniques might also be developed that would also provide massive opportunities for sunnier countries using desert land for solar power, and enable their populations to thrive in their own places rather than considering desperate means to migrate to Europe.

     The concepts referred to above give some little idea of the many areas ripe for the research, development and application of the kind of techniques that are urgently required everywhere if we are to manage to build the new sustainable society. The challenge is so huge that the more widely the response is connected, the better. SNAPP envisages a strong connection with Portugal, which has very many advantages to offer in terms of, for example, lower production costs and access to Africa and Latin America, not to mention the Iberian markets.

It happens that sailors have been trading between West Cork and Portugal, mostly under sail, since time immemorial, while at this point in history it seems a good idea for Ireland to renew such ancient links. I am seeking sponsors who would be interested in nailing their colours to this project, while first of all am seeking political advice and support, in the hope of effective corporate and state collaboration.

Good Morning Galicia.