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World's first solar powered nation |
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14 Nov 2012, 8:12 PM
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The tiny nation of Tokelau in the south Pacific has become the first to be entirely powered by renewables. The three atolls depend almost exclusively on New Zealand's budget for their finances, with little indigenous wealth creation.
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The electricity mix will be about 93% solar photovoltaic cells, and 7% biodiesel made locally from coconut oil.
The thinking behind the change is in part sound economics. Fossil fuels might initially be cheaper, but when they have to be transported in relatively small amounts across thousands of kilometres of ocean, the cost equation changes. Up until now electricity has been generated on the islands by diesel generators.
That was a factor in the New Zealand government's decision to fund the majority of the cost. But the Tokelauans say that for them the main factor is concern over climate impacts, and a desire to show it can be done. A drought earlier this year, caused by changing rainfall patterns, was severe enough that drinking water had to be shipped from New Zealand.
In previous droughts the islanders could use groundwater, so didn't need to call for help, but now, because rising sea levels have contaminated the water table, that is no longer possible.
Ocean life is also being affected by industrial-scale fishing and marine pollution.
Climate change is never far from Tokelauan minds because the future for atolls that rise only two metres at their maximum above the waves is not, currently, a happy one. So New Zealand has contributed a £4.3million solar project to allow the three atolls of Atafu, Nukunonu and Fakaofo to reduce their carbon footprint and their need for imported diesel.
Solar grids were constructed on the three atolls, with the last completed earlier this week.
"The Tokelau Renewable Energy Project is a world first. Tokelau's three main atolls now have enough solar capacity, on average, to meet electricity needs," New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully said in a statement.
"Until now, Tokelau has been 100% dependent upon diesel for electricity generation, with heavy economic and environmental costs," he added. Project co-ordinator Mike Basset-Smith said that the move represented a "milestone of huge importance" for Tokelau, as it would now be able to spend more on social welfare.
The remote islands lie between New Zealand and Hawaii. Most of the 1,500 islanders live by subsistence farming, with thousands of others migrating to New Zealand or neighbouring Samoa.
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