Sixteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

With the 2015 Paris Agreement nations around the world agreed to address climate change by focusing on the global energy transition to lower carbon including increasing renewable energy generation and transition to electric vehicles fueled from renewable sources. This study reports on the extension of my earlier Caribbean research, published in Energy Policy journal, to the South Pacific (Fiji, Tonga, Cook Islands, Hawaii and New Zealand). Small island developing states are the first to be existentially impacted by climate change through increasing frequency and severity of tropical storms, shoreline erosion and bleaching of ecologically and economically (i.e. tourism) important coral reefs. Yet these island states have to date continued to be dependent on imported diesel fuel for electricity generation while renewable electricity costs have come down dramatically and are in most cases cheaper than fossil fuels in these islands in the long run. My research explores the factors that have prevented renewables from more quickly becoming established in these states and how these factors may now be changing. These islands are also becoming field laboratories for closed energy systems with high levels of renewable electricity. Dealing innovatively with renewable power intermittency with state-of-the-art batteries, generation complementarity (solar, wind and seawater cooling systems) and total reliance on renewables are all examined. What we learn on these islands is helpful to the world’s islands and will also be useful beyond islands as the world transitions to more and higher proportion of electricity from renewable electricity generation and more cars that are electric.