Wind- blown clouds

We are driving through the borderlands between counties Donegal and Tyrone, in the north- west of Ireland, on our way to the Meenbog wind farm (Figure 4.1). This was the site of a 2020 peatslide, reportedly caused by the construction of a ‘floating’ access road for the installation and maintenance of turbines. A video of the peatslide posted on Twitter by a passing hillwalker shows trees and boulders floating on rafts of peat drifting down the hillside. Eighteen months earlier, Amazon Web Services (AWS) had announced that it was entering into a corporate power purchase agreement (CPPA) with the facility's owner. This was proudly heralded in the media as a clear sign of the tech multinational's commitment to climate action.

To get to Meenbog, we follow the Barnesmore Gap. Today, what appears as a passageway for infrastructure across the rugged Bluestack Mountains was carved by glaciers about 13,000 years ago. Sphagnum moss, the ‘bog-builder’, along with the wet climate, has decomposed and created uneven layers of peat over the bedrock. It is this soil formation that characterises the bogs as a resource, beginning with its recognition as a fuel source after the clearance of the woodlands. Large swathes of blanket bogs in Ireland are still beholden to ancient, commons- based turbary rights of local residents, or the right to use certain plots of land for domestic turf- cutting. Driving across the western countryside, we can see the extent of this still- lively culture of energy. Veins of drainage ditches, excavation lines, and stacks of dried peat made by turf- cutters are visible for miles across many of these landscapes, with typically few permanent dwellings. This semi- subsistence energy economy takes place alongside wind farms, sprawling evergreen plantations, and industrial- scale cutaway sites.