Spirit of Ireland plans energy transformation Sunday, May 31, 2009 By Gavin Daly When technology firm Orbiscom was sold for $100 million in January, co-founder Graham O’Donnell could have funded a comfortable retirement with his share of the proceeds.
Instead, O’Donnell has been working on one of the most ambitious projects the country has ever seen - and one that has attracted both praise and scepticism.
An engineer and entrepreneur, O’Donnell is the public face of the Spirit of Ireland project, which is proposing a €10 billion investment to give Ireland ‘‘energy independence within five years’’.
He is also the banker for Spirit of Ireland, spending more than €250,000 of his own money on consultants from Britain, Norway, the US,Canada and Japan. According to O’Donnell, they have all said that Spirit of Ireland’s proposal - to switch Ireland from fossil fuels to wind and hydro power - is technically feasible and financially viable.
The idea is relatively simple. Spirit of Ireland says that energy generated from wind farms can meet some, but not all, of the country’s needs. However, wind energy could be used at off-peak times to pump water from the sea into reservoirs created from valleys on the west coast.
The water could then be released to generate hydroelectric power into the national grid at times of peak demand. With the right amount of wind and hydro, Spirit of Ireland says that Ireland could end its dependence on fossil fuels and become a net exporter of energy.
The idea was first mooted by Trinity College professor Igor Shvets in a public talk in December last year, and O’Donnell came on board with his support. He said he was motivated by ‘‘concerns about the economy’’, particularly worries for the future prospects of young people and the vulnerability of the country to increases in fossil fuel prices.
‘‘This is a project that is fundable from domestic and international sources, and most of the money would go back into the economy,” he said. ‘‘There is an opportunity to create an energy industry employing hundreds of thousands of people. This can become the piston of our economy.”
After six months of work, the plan was unveiled in newspaper ads early this month. While O’Donnell said it had attracted ‘‘tremendous support’’, some questions have been raised about technical aspects of the project, who would own it and how it would be funded.
O’Donnell believes the technical questions are easily addressed, because al l the elements of the proposal exist in other countries. If anything, he said, it should be easier in Ireland. ‘‘We have the right wind, the right valleys, even the right rock to dam the valleys,” he said.
The Spirit of Ireland group is not proposing to own the project, which O’Donnell said would be set up as a ‘‘non-profit national co-operative’’ with the public as shareholders.
‘‘We would propose to stand down when it gets to a point where it can proceed. It could be run by a board of people who have public profile with another layer of governance,” O’Donnell said.
On the question of sourcing the €10 billion needed for the project, he said that half the money could be raised in Ireland - from the public, high net-worth individuals, pension funds and possibly the National Treasury Management Agency.
The remainder could come from overseas, sovereign funds and European sources such as the European Investment Bank, he said.
‘‘Our job now is to take the whole project to a point where we can put it in front of investors and they will say ‘yes’,” said O’Donnell.
He said that ‘‘initial discussions’’ had already been held with potential investors, including Irish pension funds and sovereign funds in London.
‘‘Investor certainty is the key to make this happening. They need reassurance that this is part of a national strategy. If it is going to face ten Corribs, then it won’t be possible,” he said, referring to the protests and planning delays that have plagued the Shell gas pipeline project in Mayo for several years.
That will mean getting the full support from the government, the public and finance providers to allow the building of wind farms, reservoirs and related infrastructure.
‘‘If we have a unanimous consensus, then we can do it. If people are not prepared to live with wind farms and cabling and infrastructure, then we go back to square one,” said O’Donnell.
He said that more than 50 people, including experts in relevant fields, were now involved in Spirit of Ireland on a voluntary basis, ‘‘working on the legal, environmental, financial and economic’’ issues. The group has been contacted by more than 3,000 people and has had ‘‘offers of investment from all sorts of people’’, according to O’Donnell.
Meetings have been held with the electricity grid operator, Eirgrid, and politicians from all parties, including finance minister Brian Lenihan, who ‘‘got it in a heartbeat’’, according to O’Donnell. ‘‘He could see very quickly why it makes sense,” he said.
A spokesman for Lenihan confirmed that the minister had met representatives of Spirit of Ireland, and said that ‘‘any proposals will be examined when submitted’’ to the government.
Eamon Ryan, the Green Party Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, would also have a major role to play if the project is to proceed.
O’Donnell is undaunted by the scale of the project, believing that it will take extraordinary action to get the country back on its feet. ‘‘If we don’t do this, I’m not sure what’s going to come of us,” he said.
‘‘We are just an outcrop- no one is going to come to our rescue.”
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