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Documentary: Les îles du future – Islands of the Future

Christian Heynen of ARTE TV channel visited Orkney in the Autumn of 2014 to witness for himself the ‘blue energy’ revolution taking place on the islands. Whilst he may not of heard of Orkney before he was asked to produce a documentary about the islands, it would seem that the experience has made a lasting impression:


“When I first heard I had to go to Orkney, I was wondering: ‘Orkney? Where is it?’

“My job was to make one 52 minute documentary of a five part TV series called “Islands of the Future“ produced for German – French TV channel ARTE. It tells the story of five exceptional islands. Each beautiful and fascinating, but above all exemplary. Farmers, business people, engineers and scientists on these islands have taken on the challenge of revolutionising our energy provision – without oil, coal, gas or nuclear power. Just with renewable energy.

“And I was the lucky one who became the director of the Orkney film. And although I had to take a close look on the map to find it at the edge of Europe, I learned pretty fast that it is the Mecca for many engineering pioneers around the world: Remote, with an amazing landscape, and the centre of wave and tidal energy development. A new technology that could change energy production for a lot of countries with coastline, and we have quite a lot on our blue planet.

“Energy companies want cheap and low maintenance generating plants. And although it is still some time until that goal is reached with tidal and wave power, I was deeply impressed by the passion of the engineers and scientists. Of their machines, their perseverance to work on a vision and the solidarity between the different companies and institutes. It is one big family who dedicates their life and work towards this goal: to establish wave and tidal power next to wind and solar as a third leg of green energy, or in this case blue energy. They have already shown that producing energy is possible, but now they have to develop machines which are practicable and easy to maintain.

“Wind and solar needed many years to achieve this. Hopefully Orkney will have the same time.

“The future will show if they succeed. But already 300 people on Orkney are working in this sector or in the supply chain. Comparing the population of Orkney to Germany, that would mean one million Germans working in the field of blue energy. So it is already a success story; and if the will and persistence of the people who work on Orkney are an indicator of whether they will reach their goal, the answer will be yes.

“For me it was a great and wonderful experience – in times where a lot of people are negative, pessimistic and moan – to find people who are forward looking and positive. They believe and we need more of this attitude.

“I hope my film was able to capture this. This unique and wonderful place, this new technique and the people who fight for it.

“Thank you for this experience.”

Guest blog by Christian Heynen, Film Director, ARTE

To view other documentaries from the Islands of the Future TV series, visit: Les îles du futur : la série documentaire

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