Renewable energy can enhance resilience of small islands
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Renewable energy can enhance resilience of small islands Tony Weir1 · Mahendra Kumar1,2 Received: 27 May 2020 / Accepted: 26 August 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract This paper summarizes some of the ways in which increased use of renewable energy can reduce vulnerability of nations and communities to hydro-meteorological disasters (i.e. enhance their resilience). It uses examples mainly from the small island countries of the Pacific, as the issues raised are particularly pertinent there. In particular, distributed electricity generation reduces vulnerability of supply to severe weather. Keywords Resilience · Small Island Developing States · Renewable energy · Remote islands · Hydro-meteorological disasters
1 Introduction This paper summarizes some of the ways in which increased use of renewable energy (RE) can reduce vulnerability of nations and communities to hydro-meteorological disasters (i.e. enhance their resilience). It uses examples mainly from the small island countries of the Pacific, as the issues raised are particularly pertinent there. Energy security refers to the reliability of energy supplies on which modern economies rely. It is a major issue in many countries after a disaster event. A well-documented case is the small Caribbean island of Puerto Rico in the months following Hurricane Maria in 2017. Even though it is a US Territory, most families and businesses there remained without power, cell phone service was limited, and clean water, food, medicine and fuel were all in very short supply (Mercy Corps 2020). The performance then of photovoltaic systems, installed either before or shortly after the hurricane, offers lessons for other island countries, including Small Island Developing States (SIDS) (Limperis 2017). Modern interest in energy security dates from the dramatic increases in price and decreases in availability of petroleum products in the 1970s. The primary concern then was on ways in which countries could reduce the cost of the imported oil on which their economies depended (Foley and Nassim 1976; Laird 2001). This included even Small Island * Tony Weir [email protected] 1
Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia
2
Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development, University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji
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Developing States, in many of which the cost of imported oil was comparable to the value of all their exports (Newcombe et al. 1982). This prompted an interest in ‘new and renewable’ sources of energy. Moreover, it has become increasingly clear since the IPCC’s First Assessment Report in 1990 that climate change, driven by the still increasing use of fossil fuels, is making climatic disasters more intense and (in some areas) more frequent, such as from hurricanes, floods, droughts and wildfires (IPCC 1992, 2014).
2 Pacific Islands: vulnerability and political framework The 14 independent Pacific Island Countries (PICs) comprise many islands sc
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