On Orkney Islands an intellectual revolution is underway, made of wind, sun and sea waves.
15 kilometres beyond the border of Scotland, this archipelago of twenty islands has become the site of a turning point on energy that began forty years ago with some experimental projects on the production of renewable energies.
Orkney was once utterly dependent on power that was produced by burning coal and gas on the Scottish mainland and then transmitted through an undersea cable. Today, on the other hand, the population of Orkney has cancelled and overturned its relationship of energy dependence: it is autonomous from the motherland Scotland and produces more electricity than necessary, storing it and selling it to the grid. In 2018 Orkney produces 130.5% of its electricity needs.
Storms hit the islands throughout the year. The land is flat and without trees, the grass grows horizontally swept by the wind and it nestles on the ground in tangles of leaves and stems.
The rains knock down shacks, tear the tiles from the roofs and can eat meters of coastline in one night. Residents use to say that in Orkney “you don’t need an umbrella, you need a riot shield”.
The decisive agent of this reversal was the way in which the islanders have rethought their environment and its characteristics.
The decades of experimentation on the production of energy from wind, solar and marine sources have guaranteed a constant energy flow that does not originate from violent, forced and invasive technological acts, but from a kind request of the resources of Nature. The experiments are carried out on different zones of the archipelago, both on land and at sea, through the delimitation of specific areas of intervention that transform the landscape into an active energy production agent.
The flat landscape of Orkney is dotted with high white and grey prods that feed the life of the community itself. After the first experiments of the 1980s, many inhabitants of the Mainland began to invest in small and medium-sized wind turbines to be installed on their own farm or in their own garden, to make themselves autonomous. The wind farms present are owned by the community and generate energy for local villages; electric charging stations are larger than petrol pumps; devices that can transform wave energy and tides into electricity are tested in the waters and on the seabed of the islands.
However, the real story that emerges is another. The population of a small archipelago in the North Sea has imagined a different energy future and has begun to give it form and concreteness.
Ecowarriors is a documentary that narrates the energetic evolution of this community through the eyes of its members, social agents or warriors – as some of them call themselves – of a very profound change in society and in the way in which a person thinks and relates with energy.
