How the world’s most remote EV charger is helping an island in the Atlantic ditch fossil fuels

The island of St Helena is hoping that better infrastructure will incentivise more people to move away from petrol and diesel-powered vehicles.

Transcript

00:00We want to get to 80% from renewable energy, and then the next step is to roll out the

00:16infrastructure so that we are using electric vehicles more and more on the island.

00:21There is a lot of diesel and petrol vehicles primarily, and we want to change that behavior

00:28and start to use more electric vehicles.

00:42There's a lot of myths around EVs at the moment, so it's important to educate people in terms

00:47of what they're capable of. They're seen very much as a city car, but actually they're just

00:51as relevant in rural communities or rural environments as they are in maybe an urban one.

00:59And to be honest, if you can operate a vehicle,

01:02an electric vehicle in this type of environment, then you really can anywhere.

01:10I think that people's attitudes on the island towards the environment are changing.

01:15It's been a long time where we've all just been really reliant on diesel and petrol,

01:20but since the government invested in wind turbines and solar panels to help contribute

01:26towards our electricity generation, it's helped to open up people's minds in terms of what is available.

01:39We're a place just below the equator. We have about 12 hours of sunlight a day,

01:45almost all year round. And because we're a small island in the middle of the ocean,

01:50there's always sort of a wind blowing through. So we do have

01:55really ideal conditions for solar and wind energy.

01:59Because we are so small here on St Helene, and we have a small population and a small

02:04government, I think it's very possible that we can become completely green. We could only have

02:11diesel generation in terms of resilience in case something goes wrong with the renewables.

02:17But it's entirely possible that we can run an entire island from renewable energy.