Islands Business - Energy: PUSHING RENEWABLES THAT WORK FOR ISLANDS

Fuel crisis long term: SOPAC’s Fairbairn

Elenoa Baselala
Paul Fairbairn is the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission’s manager for Community Lifelines Programme. He spoke to staff reporter ELENOA BASELALA on the commission’s work on renewable energy.

Here is a condensed version of the interview:

Paul Fairbairn... consumers bear some of the costs of high fuel prices.

Why is SOPAC talking about an energy crisis when the Pacific has not seen any power utilities, airlines, or even a state going belly up because of high fuel cost?

“I suppose you don’t, but the problem or the issues are that in the long run consumers in the end often bear some of the costs indirectly from increases in fuel price. For example, here in Fiji, if you look at your buses, in a compensatory way, if fuel costs more and there’s no increases in fares or tariffs, then maintenance is reduced on vehicles, and that has a compounding factor as you can see around here with the emissions from buses of big black fumes. So they are not directly visible or obvious outcomes or impacts from it. One of the biggest concerns is more in the longer term. There needs to be good planning, you need to plan well for your energy processes and obviously your security of supply chain. The security of supply in the Pacific is relatively limited given the fact that Papua New Guinea is the only country that does have petroleum resources.”

Apart from a bulk petroleum purchasing initiative, don’t you agree there’s little else Pacific islands countries can do about high fuel costs?

“Certainly they can. I mean power utilities in the region have very, very, poor efficiencies. The actual inefficiencies of their utilities are high, which means their losses are high. They have very, very high losses in transmission, disruption and some from generation. So that’s quite critical. So energy efficiency is one way you can actually reduce the use of fossil fuels. Bulk purchasing has a number of constraints and if you want more details you can talk to the Jared Morris at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat.”

The SOPAC statement following the Pacific energy ministers meeting in Rarotonga last April spoke also of integrating petroleum and biofuel strategies as well as getting regional institutions like the University of the South Pacific to increase their technical capacities. Can you explain how these will assist the countries cope with high energy costs?

“The focus area of this question and the response to this question is really that good education or the ability to train young professionals and even young technical people in sound energy technology in both design, plan and also in maintenance is very important because it contributes significantly to the long- term effectiveness of any of your systems that you develop. So if you plan well, your systems are well balanced, you have the appropriate mix of technologies, then you will find that you actually minimise your energy costs.”

How else can Pacific islands countries cushion their high fuel bill?

“You can carry out efficiency standards in a number of ways. Like with the utility, the actual supply side, efficiency, the generation side of it, on the demand side you encourage users to be efficient in their use of appliances, lighting or air conditioning.

“One of the projects we have at the moment with the Department of Energy is introducing appliance labelling so getting energy efficient appliances into the country and encouraging through consumer education, people to buy these so that they actually reduce their electricity bills. Big companies employ energy auditing to reduce their consumption and also contribute to reducing the high fuel bill. The use of renewable technology is one way but a lot of renewable technologies have quite high costs.”

Renewable energy has been talked about in the region for a long time, but islands countries are not going into this in a large way to have any impact on their import bill. Is this so?

“I’d say no. It’s not really the case. There are a number of renewable technologies around but what is special to the region is the fact that technologies that are introduced need to be commercially proven. We’ve been doing wet resources assessment. The Fiji Electricity Authority is currently developing wind energy farms. We are doing monitoring in the Cook Islands, Samoa and in Tuvalu, as a follow-on from wind resource assessment. The other thing that needs to be considered is that the region is quite vulnerable to extreme weather events. Additionally, there have been quite a lot of use of solar for lighting in rural and remote areas. You can also get to use biofuels—either coconut oil or blends of coconut oil.”

Apart from solar power, what other forms of renewable energy should islands countries be seriously promoting?

“The only one I have not talked about is ocean wave energy and there again is a possible option for the Pacific. But at this stage, no commercially proven plants have been developed and run.”

How far has SOPAC gone into identifying alternative sources of energy in the region?

“We do quite a lot of work in resource assessment of existing technologies, working in resource assessment with hydro, solar energy, ocean wave energy, so we tend to work in identifying alternatives that would be able to be used on a commercial basis. We are also doing some work on biofuels and we have also helped a number of countries including the Fiji government in the consideration of ethanol as well.”

Proponents of nuclear energy say it is clean fuel. Apart from the fact that Pacific Islands Countries have declared the region a nuclear free zone, what other obstacles does SOPAC see in nuclear energy?

“I think with nuclear energy the scale is inappropriate. But the main concern here is total reliant on oceans for fisheries and coastal areas for tourism so any pollution or change in the environment will be disastrous. If you were to put in a nuclear power plant, you know they use huge amounts of water for cooling, it would change the whole environment.

“The key with nuclear energy is that once you produce or generate nuclear waste from your plant, although it is sent away and recycled, you still own it. Safety and security would be an issue as well and the physical maintenance of it.”