And here’s how:

At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of science, a panel on energy storage included a talk by Igor Shvets, a researcher at Trinity College in Dublin. Shvets is involved in the planning for an audacious scheme called Spirit of Ireland that would turn large areas of the west coast of that country into a renewable energy powerhouse.

If the plan is rolled out to its full extent, Ireland could even end up sending its electricity under the Irish Sea to the UK.

Yay.

Will all of this work? Everything about it is pretty mature technology, so there’s technically no reason why it shouldn’t. The thing that strikes me as as the biggest concern is the one thing we don’t have any experience with: the large scale storage of salt water in elevated reservoirs. There would seem to be a significant chance that it will seep into the local environment, with results that are difficult to predict.

Oh.

Turning Ireland’s Water And Wind Into Energy Exports (John Timmins, Ars Technica)