ESIN
European Small Islands FederationArchive for Infrastructure
Cars fueled by hydrogen will be tested on Aran Islands
The SEAFUEL project, aimed at developing the use of hydrogen as a renewable energy source, has been launched by NUI Galway. It will see a fleet of cars powered by the fuel take to the roads in the Aran Islands, Madeira in Portugal and the Canary Islands.
The €3.5 million three year project aims to promote and support the shift towards a low-carbon economy by showing how it is feasible to power local transport networks using the hydrogen.
In particular the team wants to demonstrate the viability of producing, distributing and using the gas generated by renewable energy and sea water in Atlantic areas.
The €3.5m project led by NUI Galway will also see construction of a hydrogen plant on the Canary Islands, where up to 25kg of hydrogen gas a day will be produced, sufficient to power up to 10 commercially-available cars with a maximum range of 600km. The hydrogen will be generated using seawater and solar panels, and if successful, similar plants could be installed in offshore and isolated communities, including the Aran Islands.
The project is also being piloted in Madeira in Portugal.
The project aims to drastically reduce greenhouse emissions, particle matter (PM) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), in line with the Clean Air Programme for Europe 2008/50/EC, and provide a pathway for isolated regions to become energetically independent, leading to future installations in other Atlantic regions. An alternative fuels model for islands will be developed to fulfil the requirements that each of the partner regions propose for their ‘Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS3), aimed at low carbon economy and efficient use of marine resources.
Dr Pau Farràs from the School of Chemistry at NUI Galway, sais the project is aimed at establishing a business model to help offshore communities reduce energy imports.
“The plan for the project is to study if this model is a viable business model to export to other places within the islands and other regions,” he said.
“The Aran Islands already has electric vehicles, and we are looking at other possibilities including heat, but also for boats and ferries. We are focused on the islands because they are so dependent on imports.
“This is a carbon-free fuel which will be good for the island and will break the dependency.”
Islands Initiative Secretariat
Thanks to the remarkable and unfailing work of Kostas Komninos and Alkisti Florou at DAFNI, the consortium in which ESIN is one of 26 partners and which is headed by CPMR, has submitted our application for the Islands Initiative Secretariat (re Call for Tenders ENER/B#2017-462). Small islands are part of a major European initiative.
Greening the Islands 2017 Award
The European Parliament has assigned ESINs vice president Christian Pleijel to examine how much water eight European islands use, who uses it, what it is used for, where it comes from, what it costs and if it is possible to svae some of this water. The project is run in cooperation with ESIN, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Hellenic Small Islands Network, CRES in Greece and AIP in France.
In the first phase, field studies were made on all the islands. In a second phase, mayors and water managers from these islands gathered for a three-day workshop on the island of Vis. The challenge was to see if it’s possible to save 25% of the water the island uses.
The answer was both yes and no. They concluded that it is possible to save between 10 and 55%, depending on the island’s situation. In total, this would save 178 million small water per year, which also means 470,000 less kWh, reduced costs of 266,000 euros and reduced CO2 emissions by 42 tonnes.
The project is likely to be part of the DG energy’s major energy initiative on islands, which is supposed to decarbonise 1,000 islands by 2030.
Today, in competition with many other water projects, we were awarded the 2017 prize by the global “Greening the Islands” environmental organization during their annual conference on the island of Favignana, outside of Sicily.
– “We are fighting water waste”, said Pleijel at the ceremony. “Simply put: We produce more water then we need, and we don’t need as much water as we use.”
Our Water Saving Challenge nominated to the Greening the Islands 2017 Award
Greening the islands has nominated three projects for its 2017 Awards in the category “Water”. Our “Water Saving Challenge” is one of them. You can only vote today http://www.greeningtheislands.net/app/#/dashboard/awards. The jury will take into consideration both the quality of the project and the quantity of votes.
PS You have to be a member of Greening the Islands to vote. It is free, it is an excellent organisation and we believe all friends of small islands would want to join it 😉
Water saving objectives
Mayors and water managers from eight islands met on Croatian island Vis to decide if it is possible for islands to save water. The islands – Tilos and Ithaca in Greece, Vis and Lastovo in Croatia, Sein and Houat in France, Cape Clear and Inis Oírr – all have a scarcity of drinking water, mainly due to the development of tourism.
Based on recent, detailed field studies of the water situation on each of the islands made by the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and with live support from professors Anders Nordstrom and Sara Borgstrom, the meeting discussed best and worst practices in water saving. Moving further into action planning, they found that clever combinations of changes in human behaviour, simple household and large-scale technologies, smart pricing and governance can lead to savings from 6 to 50% within two years, as reported on Croatian national news https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfM_bS6yZ6s.
This would mean 18 billions of litres saved a year. If this is desalinated water, it is also a huge saving on energy and money.
With strong support from Tonino Picula http://toninopicula.com/en/from-media/internet-and-press/mep-piculas-project-water-saving-challenge/a2400, the project team is going to document their findings and suggestions to be presented before the Europan Parliament on November 22. They also want to create a ”Islands as Water Saving Labs” two-year project to measure their ongoing accomplishments and to share their knowledge and experiences within the group, to ESIN islands and to all who want to learn how islands manage to make small water footprints.
ESIN annual general meeting in Orkney
Frontiers Magazine, editor Howie Firth, has blessed us with a beautiful article crammed with facts on ESIN and the upcoming AGM, see http://frontiersmagazine.org/europes-small-islands-to-gather-in-orkney/ , with stories from Öland, (Sweden), Tilos (Greece) and Sein (France).
Tilos wins the EUSEW 2017 award
Greek island Tilos (pop 780) is going from oil-based electricity, with an undersea cable from neighbouring Kos, to a battery-based storage system that will turn the island into a resilient RES-based microgrid using only wind and solar power.
For this, it won the EUSEW 2017 award yesterday evening.
Competitors were ESIN represented by Simskäla, one of the Aland islands, and Bornholm in Denmark. Tilos deserves it well, showing how islands can move away from relying on expensive and polluting oil-based energy imports, avoid power cuts and contribute towards renewable energy growth.
Congratulations to Maria Kamma, mayor of Tilos, and all of her 780 islanders!
