The Seychelles Government is committed to providing adequate, reliable and affordable energy to meet future energy consumption needs and to underpin strong economic growth through consumable energy initiatives.
The Seychelles enjoy favourable conditions for renewable energy (RE) resources, such as wind and solar. However, renewable energy has been very little tapped so far – the only renewable energy installation being a 4 MW wind farm off Port Victoria and a limited amount of rooftop PV installation.
A first analysis of the power supply of the three main granite islands and a possible development towards a 100% renewable power supply was conducted between December 2015 and April 2016. A proposal to develop a 100% Renewable Energy Roadmap for Seychelles presented by the Minister of MEECC was adopted and approved by the Cabinet of Ministers in April 2016. Since then, the Ministry and its partners have been working on a 100% Renewable Energy Roadmap, which further strengthens and supports the country’s National Climate Change Strategy and Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) in which the country commits to reduce its economy-wide absolute GHG emissions by 21.4% in 2025 and 29.0% in 2030 relative to baseline emissions, subject to international support.
Notwithstanding the above national commitment, the Ministry is preparing the strategic Roadmap towards a much-accelerated transformational change with the result that the energy system is decarbonised and is based on (close to) 100% renewable energy resources by 2030, and fully 100% renewable energy by 2035 when E-mobility is considered. It targets an ambitious transformation and diversification of the Seychelles’ currently 85 MW diesel-dominated electricity generation capacity (on Mahé, Praslin and La Digue), aiming at replacing diesel generators with domestic and international public and private financing. The main instruments to be developed are a financial incentives schemes providing Feed-in Tariffs (FiT), intensive institutional capacity building and technical support to trigger the necessary private investments into RE and public investment into infrastructures during the transition phase. An increased share of renewable energy will significantly reduce the need for diesel imports, the almost sole primary energy source today.
The Ministry works closely with the energy regulator the Seychelles Energy Commission and the Public Utilities Corporation.