The smallest and least known of Spain’s Canary Islands, El Hierro, is making a splash by becoming the first island in the world fully energy self-sufficient through combined water and wind power.
A wind farm opening at the end of June will turn into electricity the gusts that rake the steep cliffs and green mountains of the volcanic island off the Atlantic coast of Africa.
Its five turbines installed at the northeastern tip of El Hierro near the capital Valverde will have a total output of 11.5 megawatts — more than enough power to meet the demand of the island’s roughly 10,000 residents and its energy-hungry water desalination plants.
Photo: AFP
Although other islands around the world are powered by solar or wind energy, experts say El Hierro is the first to secure a constant supply of electricity by combining wind and water power and with no connection to any outside electricity network.
Surplus power from the wind turbines will be used to pump fresh water from a reservoir near the harbor to a larger one at a volcanic crater located about 700 meters (2,300 feet) above sea level.
When there is little or no wind, the water will be channeled down to the lower reservoir through turbines to generate electricity in turn.
Photo: AFP
“This system guarantees us a supply of electricity,” said the director of the Gorona del Viento wind power plant, Juan Manuel Quintero who is supervising final tests before the plant starts functioning in a few weeks.
The plant will account for 50 percent of the island’s electricity demand when it is officially inaugurated at the end of June, a figure that will rise to 100 percent over the following months.
The scheme will cut carbon dioxide emissions by 18,700 tonnes per year and eliminate the island’s annual consumption of 40,000 barrels of oil.
El Hierro will maintain its fuel oil power station as a back up, just in case.
World Pioneer
The island is cited as a pioneering project by IRENA, the international organization for renewable energy, and other experts such as Alain Gioda, a climate historian at France IRD science research institute.
“The true novelty of El Hierro is that technicians have managed, without being connected to any national network, to guarantee a stable production of electricity, that comes 100 percent from renewable energy, overcoming the intermittent nature of the wind,” he said.
El Hierro’s wind power plant has sparked interest from other islands seeking to follow its example.
Officials from Aruba, Hawaii, Samso in Denmark, Oki in Japan, and Indonesia have all shown interest.
“It is a project which is considered at the world level as a pioneer and it is one of the most important in the production of renewable energy,” said the president of island’s local council, Alpidio Armas.
“El Hierro can be a sort of laboratory,” he added, providing an example to other islands around the world which are home to around 600 million people.
El Hierro, the westernmost of Spain’s Canary Islands, has also been invited to present its project at several international conferences, including in Malta and South Korea.
Electric Vehicles
El Hierro wants to extend its environmental credentials even further by ensuring that by 2020 all of its 6,000 vehicles are run on electricity thanks to an agreement with the Renault-Nissan alliance.
The wind power plant cost 80 million euros (US$110 million) to build.
The island authorities own 60 percent of the plant, with 30 percent held by Spanish energy company Endesa — a subsidiary of Italian group Enel — and 10 percent by a local technology institute.
“We wanted to be the owners of the majority of the plant. That means that the profits as well as the possible losses, that is the destiny of Gorona del Viento, is the responsibility of the residents of the island,” said Armas.
Revenues from the plant will boost the island’s budget by about one to three million euros per year, he said.
“These are revenues that can go to the local residents, to subsidize water prices, infrastructure, social policies,” he said.
El Hierro, designated by UNESCO as a Biosphere Reserve with 60 percent of its territory of 278 square kilometers protected to preserve its natural diversity, also hopes its green energy drive will draw visitors interested in nature and science.
“We cannot turn down the benefits that tourism brings, but we don’t want mass tourism,” said Armas.
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and