The island of St Helena is hoping that better infrastructure will incentivise more people to move away from petrol and diesel-powered vehicles.
The island of St Helena has installed the world’s most remote public EV charger in its capital Jamestown.
The charger on the British Overseas Territory, nearly 2,000km from the west coast of Africa, is part of a trial by Norwegian charging company Easee and Japanese car brand Subaru.
With very few electric vehicles on the island so far, the government is hoping that improving infrastructure will incentivise more people to ditch their petrol and diesel-powered vehicles.
And, as St Helena looks to accelerate its green transition, it’s part of a strategy to wean the island off of expensive fossil fuel imports.
EVs can be an option even in the most remote locations
“It allows us to stress test a lot of our systems, be that the data connection to the charger to see if we can fix something so remote,” says Adam Rodgers, country director for Easee for the UK and Ireland.
“We’re very confident we can – we’ve proved that in the past – but it will be a real live testbed for us to just really test and make sure the next generation of chargers that we might produce have taken some of that learning into it as well.”
Rodgers adds that charging is the most important part of the equation. It doesn’t matter how good the EV is, how reliable or how far you can drive if you don’t know where the next charging point is.
For Lorraine Bishton, managing director of Subaru UK, it proves EVs are an option even in the most remote of locations.
“There’s a lot of myths around EVs at the moment,” she says, “They’re seen very much as a city car, but actually they’re just as relevant in rural communities or rural environments as they are in maybe an urban one.”
“And to be honest, if you can operate an electric vehicle in this type of environment then you really can anywhere.”
Attitudes to EVs are changing in St Helena
There are just a handful of electric vehicles already on St Helena, which is also famous as being home to the world’s oldest living tortoise Jonathan. The government has cut tax on importing EVs to almost zero but still, the one vehicle brought in by Subaru has upped the total number by 20 per cent.
“There’s only very few electric vehicles on the island at the moment,” says Mark Brooks, Minister for Treasury and Economic Development in the St Helena government.
“We want to incentivise people bringing in more electric vehicles. So installing electric chargers, putting in the infrastructure, and then we can work on policies to try and, increase the electric vehicle fleet on the island.”
Despite this, Tara Wortley, a businesswoman and one of the few electric vehicle owners in St Helena, says people’s opinions about EVs are rapidly changing.
“There’s still a little bit of scepticism, I think, about whether or not renewables and electric vehicles is part of St Helena’s future, but I mean, we’ve had electric vehicles arrive on the island now and they do work,” she explains.
Wortley has found using an EV much cheaper. Where it would have cost her around £7 to £8 (roughly €8 to €9) a day to drive a diesel car, her daily electric car costs are just £0.17 (€0.20).
There are business opportunities too in this green transition. Derek Pedley is hoping to bring a fleet of electric rental vehicles to St Helena in early 2025 – for both tourists and local people.
“I think people are very open and enthusiastic to have electric vehicles. I think particularly on the rental market at the beginning because I’ll say they’ll class that as a lower risk,” he says.
All of the island’s EVs are currently charged at home and Pedley says it makes sense to have charging points available in Jamestown and even at the airport for people collecting rental cars.
“If you were to revisit the island in five years’ time, the number of electric cars you’ll find on the island, I am confident will be three figures,” he concludes.
Running an island on renewable energy
The cost of importing fossil fuels also has the government of St Helena looking more closely at its energy sources.
St Helena is looking to wean itself off of imported fossil fuels. It currently spends around £5 million (€6 million) a year bringing in fuel for power and vehicles – that’s just under a seventh of its annual £34 million (€40.5 million) income from the UK.
“Obviously with St Helena being isolated, we have to bring fuel in at least every month to every six weeks,” explains Merril Lawrence, electricity generation manager at Connect, St Helena.
Depending on how much renewable energy is available, he says St Helena uses around 6,000 litres of diesel every day. But there could be another way.
“Where we are placed, just below the equator. We have about 12 hours of sunlight a day, almost all year round. And because we’re a small island in the middle of the ocean, there’s always, sort of, a wind blowing through,” Brooks adds.
“So we do have really ideal conditions for solar and wind energy.”
The island has already committed to increasing its wind and solar power generation from 25 per cent to 80 per cent in the next four years. It thinks it can go fully renewable in the future.
“Because we are so small here on St Helena and we have a small population and a small government, I think it’s very possible that we can become completely green,” Brooks adds.
“We could only have diesel generation in terms of resilience in case something goes wrong with the renewables, but it is entirely possible that we can run an entire island from renewable energy.”
Watch the video above to see the world’s most remote EV charger in action.
