Ireland on a journey from solid fuel to clean and green

Irish Examiner

3 days ago

In 1939, the painter Séan Keating produced a mural for the Irish pavilion at the World Fair in New York.
The theme of the Fair was 'The World of Tomorrow'. Keating's mural depicts the monumental Ardnacrusha hydroelectric power station built in 1929, a twin propeller Aer Lingus plane and, in the middle, a mechanical peat excavator representing the fledgling peat industry.
The Turf Development Board was established in 1934 by the newly elected Fianna Fáil Government. In the early 1930s, turf was entirely cut by hand and was largely for domestic use.
Coal was the predominant fuel in the country, imported from Britain with infrastructure and logistics to support it — from Dublin port to the coal hatches built into Victorian houses.
Unlike the modern feat of engineering represented by Ardnacrusha, the traditional practice of turf-cutting was associated with backwardness and poverty, a legacy of the colonial era. One Fine Gael TD, opposed to the development of an indigenous turf industry, quipped: 'I never thought that the day would come in this country when a Bill would be introduced into our Parliament purporting to solve unemployment by turning the people's eyes to the bogs of Ireland.'
Thirty years later, the Bellacorrick turf-fuelled power station was opened with a celebratory dance in Crossmolina town hall. The Western People declared it the 'event of the century', noting that fifty years earlier, the realisation of such a project would have been more unlikely than an independent Irish state. Eighty people were employed in the power station, three hundred on the bog, providing electricity to rural households, farms and businesses.
The familiar story of Irish modernisation begins with Séan Lemass ushering in T.K. Whitaker's new economic policy in the early 1960s. This periodisation insists that the Ireland that came before 1960 was backward, inward-looking and conservative.
But where does this leave Séan Keating's confident mural depicting a brave new modern Republic?
Where does it leave the history of Ireland's peat industry, initially a project of sovereign development and energy decolonisation?
And how does this history speak to the present conjuncture of climate crisis, energy insecurity, and Ireland's geopolitical alignments in an uncertain world system?
Energy decolonisation
In 1956, Todd Andrews, who established the Turf Development Board, gave an address to the Statistical and Social Enquiry Society of Ireland entitled 'Some Precursors Of Bord Na Mona'. He gave generous praise to individuals who were 'characterised by abundance of public spirit' but whose 'endeavours were dissipated in the unpropitious social, economic and political climate of their times.' This climate was, in a word, colonialism.
Some might dismiss Andrews' reading as outdated anti-colonial sentiment. But this is to gloss the material ways in which colonialism structures the economic activity of colonised countries, including after formal independence. Dependence on British coal fundamentally constrained Southern Ireland's capacity to embark on energy-intensive, industrial development. The creation of an indigenous turf industry was thus a project of energy decolonisation.
Efforts to develop an indigenous energy industry were blocked not only by Britain, but by Irish coal merchants and their associated economic and political allies. When coal merchants were required to sell a certain amount of turf for every unit of coal, W. T. Cosgrave, leader of Fine Gael, argued that this was 'an interference with the citizen's ordinary right to purchase whatever commodity he requires'. The national media aligned with Cosgrave's position, raising the 'spectre of socialism'.
To break the status quo, to initiate something new, required state intervention at scale. After World War Two, Bord na Móna was established with new authority and resources to purchase land, embark on 10-year development plans, and to finance these plans through long term, low-interest loans from the state. Within a decade, Ireland had its first turf-fired power stations and the development of 24 new bogs producing over a million tonnes of turf a year.
A New Internationalism
In 1936, an Irish delegation led by Todd Andrews visited Finland, Germany and Russia. Weismoor was the showpiece of the German turf industry and a tourist attraction for residents of Bremen and Hamburg who came to visit the large glass houses heated with surplus heat from the turf-powered station.
Andrews also observed the neat and comfortable houses of those who worked the bogs. 'I made up my mind then', he writes in his memoir, 'that if ever I had the opportunity, I would recognise as a priority the value of maintaining a decent environment for people at work.'
For Andrews, these visits demonstrated that turf was not a source of derision or backwardness, but the basis of modern ways of living if only the proper infrastructures and planning were put in place. Between 1950-57, the Bord na Móna research station in Kildare recruited new engineering and agricultural science graduates to experiment with techniques and technologies for exploiting turf. As this expertise developed, it was only right that Ireland hosted the first International Peat Symposium in 1954, with delegates from fifteen countries.
At a time when thousands were taking to boats, the Midlands of Ireland saw internal migration in the 1950s and 1960s as the peat industry grew. Bord na Móna was the only semi-state that built housing for its workers.
Frank Gibney, a modernist architect and planner, was commissioned to design 'worker villages' from Kildare to Roscommon. These housing developments represented for Andrews, 'the fulfilment of a process aimed at industrialising a rural population while at the same time improving rather than disrupting its environment'.
Energy sovereignty
According to Todd Andrews, Bord na Móna would not have been possible without Frank Aiken. Better known for his role as Minister for Foreign Affairs through the 1950s and 1960s, Aiken had always been a strong advocate of national industry and the development of indigenous resources.
Bord na Móna needed this support. Even the ESB, the main purchaser of peat, was cool towards the industry, understanding that coal, and then oil, offered a more reliable, efficient and, ultimately, cheaper source of fuel for generating electricity.
In 1956, Bord na Móna had to lay off technical workers because the ESB refused to purchase more peat. Aiken questioned the Fine Gael Minister responsible: 'Does the Minister think it good national policy to depend on imported coal and oil for the generation of electricity?' The late 1950s was a pivotal moment in Ireland's economic development.
Under strong pressure from the US, the country was shifting away from indigenous industrialisation, towards an economy reliant on foreign direct investment. This would ultimately involve new forms of dependency on the US and EEC, undermining what indigenous industry existed, including in the energy sector.
Sovereign development means being less dependent on powerful states, such as Britain or the US. This in turn enables a country like Ireland to act more confidently on a world stage. Frank Aiken is best known for representing Ireland at the UN, speaking in favour of the People's Republic of China, supporting decolonisation across the Third World, and pushing for nuclear non-proliferation. Such principled positions were attacked by the opposition in Ireland for putting off US industries and investment.
As he advanced Ireland's policy of neutrality and multilateralism in the UN, Aiken also advanced support for newly independent countries across the Third World through solidaristic aid and cooperation. In 1964, Aer Lingus trained up to 80 African and Asian engineers and pilots in the maintenance and flying of planes, while Bord na Móna co-operated with the Government of Pakistan in initiating peat development in that country.
Reclaiming the past
We should always avoid the trap of nostalgia. But we also need to recognise that history is not a linear path. Despite what we are told, Irish modernity does not begin and end with entry into the EEC and the arrival of US companies. There are modernisation paths that were not taken, promises unfulfilled, that speak to us with new relevance today.
At a time when Ireland is doubling down on its dependence on US fossil fuels with Shannon LNG, we should remember our historic struggle for energy sovereignty against Western imperial powers; as Ireland's energy transition is increasingly dictated by the needs of US tech companies and their data centres, we should remember the public ethos and social priorities that drove the development of Bord na Móna; and as we face a situation in which Ireland has abundant offshore wind energy and yet the highest energy prices in the EU, we should remember the political ambition and state planning required to build an indigenous turf industry from the ground up.