Saint Helena: how a tiny island is trying to achieve carbon neutrality

This volcanic island is one of the most remote places on the planet.

Sitting in the middle of the South Atlantic ocean, St Helena is almost 2000 km away from its nearest neighbour: Namibia, on the African mainland.

Its remoteness is a costly affair for this British Overseas Territory: the inhabitants rely heavily on imported diesel for electricity generation.

The government now wants to change that.

Recently, it installed St. Helena's first electric vehicle charger.

St. Helena's journey towards carbon neutrality is however not starting from zero.

Some of the island's cliffs are already plastered with wind turbines and solar panels, but the government is hoping to eventually run the entire island on renewable energy.

For the inhabitants, the measure still takes some convincing. Businesswoman Tara Wortley said: "It's been a long time where we've all just been reliant on diesel and petrol but since the government invested in wind turbines and solar panels to help contribute towards our electricity generation it's helped open up people's minds in terms of what is available, there's still a little bit of scepticism I think about whether or not renewables and electric vehicles are part of St. Helena's future but we've had electric vehicles arrive on the island now and they do work so I think people's minds are changing."

The handful of islanders who have electric vehicles charge them at home.

Treasury and Economic Development Minister Mark Brooks says weaning the island off a dependency on diesel makes economic sense.

He says: "I think it's very possible that we can become completely green, we could only have diesel generation in terms of resilience, in case something goes wrong with the renewables, but it's entirely possible that we can run entirely we run the entire island from renewable energy."

The charger is to be used for a fleet of electric rental cars being introduced this year, the aim is to import a large quantity of second hand electric cars to sell at a subsidised price.

It means islanders would not have to pay shipping costs.

The experiment is to be welcomed according Professor Paul Shearing, an expert in sustainable energy at the University of Oxford's Zero Institute.

He says: "There is an imperative for all of us to consider what the zero carbon energy system looks like and that's whether your the United States of America, the UK, Belgium, whether you're an island like St. Helena, and even though they've only got 4000 inhabitants, I think that being able to explore the zero carbon context for a small island nation is really important. It obviously has the advantages of reducing the environmental impacts, but it equally has the advantages on improving their energy independence and actually guaranteeing some energy security for those island nations as well."

Shearing says the cost of introducing renewable energy systems might be high, but cost savings after that are considerable.