While locals on the islands are incredibly proud of this global reputation, they now want to be known for something even more impressive!

For the past twelve years, the local community across the three islands has been working towards making the area completely free of fossil fuels, and instead self-sufficient in locally generated renewable energy.

Their efforts have seen more than 300 homes retrofitted to date, some to a very high level, and more planned. Retrofits include anything from insulation, to heat pumps and solar PV panels. 

Dara Ó Maoildhia is chairperson of the Aran Islands Energy Cooperative, and says they are keen to make the same progress with businesses in the area. In his experience, many popular tourist spots such as hotels, restaurants and pubs are very conscious of their environmental impact.

“The idea of our Energy Co-op is to draw everybody on all three islands in [to sustainability efforts], which includes businesses of all kinds,” he explains. “Some have already had significant upgrades done, if not a full retrofit. The most attractive thing at the moment on the three islands for both residents and businesses is solar panels, because they’re cheaper than heat pumps and there’s some great grants available for them. We have a continuous stream of houses, school buildings and so on, looking to have solar panels installed.”

It's little surprise that so many people across the three islands are embracing the Energy Co-op’s mission. After all, there are many factors that make the area more likely to succeed in its decarbonisation than others.

For one, the size of the islands means that transport options are far less limited than on the mainland. Many electric cars are now visible on the three islands, particularly on Inishmore, as the EVs are ideal cars for small islands where the range is not an issue and fewer charging points are needed. The island’s popular tourist attraction, old fashioned horse rides, means there are also 30 ponies and traps available for hire. Overall, it’s a much greener picture than your typical flow of traffic on the mainland!

Another key factor that makes the Aran Islands the perfect location for this project, however, is that local residents and business owners alike have more motivation than most to cease dependence on fossil fuels — islanders pay about 20% extra for oil, gas and coal than people do on the mainland of Ireland due to the extra cost of carriage over sea.

Those same logistics play a huge factor in any environmental projects being carried out on the islands too, however. Getting both building materials and contractors out to them from the mainland can be a significant challenge, Dara points out.

“The retrofitting has been very successful so far but there have been points where we’ve feared it will all ground to a halt because we’re unable to get contractors in. Contractors are now scarce on the ground across the whole of Ireland, so the volume of work on offer to them means they can cherry pick. They’ll take the jobs that give them the highest returns or are the easiest to do and islands never qualify in that regard. Islands like ours pose all sorts of problems for contractors, getting them and their materials out here and so on. We don’t have contractors living here, or not enough at least, who are qualified to do the work. 

"We’ve found it very hard to get contractors over the last number of years, but things have improved now that we’re part of the Connemara Energy Agency. They’re recruiting contractors to work in Connemara with attractive contracts, but they add on work on the Aran Islands as well as part of the agreement.”

Getting contractors in is just one part of the equation, however, Dara warns. A particular concern for all projects is finding a way to maintain the Aran Islands as a world-class beauty spot, whilst steering clear of any works that could become an eyesore.

“We proposed a wind turbine here on Inishmore a few years back. not even a wind farm, just one singular turbine. We had a public meeting and found a lot of people were against it, so we ended up not going ahead with it. We came away from that process with a lot of new principles, though, regarding any wind turbine plans that we would propose in future.

“The first rule is that it shouldn’t be in view of the front of any houses on the island, so no resident should look out their window only to find that all they can see is a turbine — the turbine should be hidden away behind the main houses. Secondly, it shouldn’t be on any route that the islands’ tourists use, and thirdly it absolutely shouldn’t be in the middle of any scenic area. Something that really stuck with us from that meeting was something one of the local residents said; ‘You wouldn’t put a turbine in front of the Mona Lisa!”

Even with all the above criteria met, however, there’s no guarantee that a project will go ahead. As Dara points out, planning permission is becomingly increasingly tricky.

“Limestone pavement is becoming very scarce across Europe, it’s been built over everywhere, so any bit of limestone pavement left today is highly protected – they don’t want anything built on it, not a school, not a road, nothing! Unfortunately, Aran is all limestone pavement, which makes it very difficult for us to build anything, even a house, never mind a wind turbine. It’s definitely a hinderance to any plans for a wind turbine, so going forward we’re looking at other means of generating energy, such as solar farms and energy from the sea. So much energy —  wind, water, and light — is available to us locally. There’s a lot of possibilities for us to explore.”

To learn more about the Aran Islands Energy Co-op’s future plans, visit www.aranislandsenergycoop.ie.