Islands Tokelau was the first territory in the world, which is fully capable to ensure their energy needs with the help of the sun.

A small archipelago in the South Pacific ocean and consists of only three atolls (Atafu, Nukunonu, Fakaofo), used to do diesel fuel, but the New Zealand authorities, which owns the island, has allocated $7 million for construction of solar plants, and the last one was completed this week. The project demanded $8.5 million has more than 4 thousand solar panels and over 1 300 batteries.

Nothing like the world was not, said today the Minister of foreign Affairs of New Zealand Murray McCully. Diesel is very expensive (in year went about 320 thousand liters, and despite the fact that electricity there is 15-18 hours a day), and most of one and a half thousand inhabitants of Tokelau fed agriculture. Many people from the Islands (thousands of them) prefer to live in New Zealand and Samoa. Now, say the authors of the project, the authorities of the archipelago will be able to spend more on social security.

Attempts to switch completely to alternative energy sources have already been made on some Islands (Danish Samosa, El Hierro in the Canary archipelago), but in this case it first happened with the whole administrative units. It should be noted and the complexity of ideas: the equipment has to cope with the strong wind, high temperature and corrosive atmosphere, saturated with salt. If, say, in the same New Zealand something breaks, part easily extracted and delivered, and the nearest to Tokelau land is an archipelago Samoa, and 500 km Notice also, that on Tokelau has no airport, no simple berth: the court goes only to the barrier reef, where people and goods move on boats and motor-boats. Nevertheless, they succeeded.

Outstanding achievement should convince all Pacific States and territories to refuse from imported fuel. They are not rich, almost all the economies of these countries is a prisoner of games moneybags with energy prices. In many cases, the cost of fossil fuels exceed the gross income from exports.

Tonga and the cook Islands, Tuvalu and Samoa also undertook the reform of the energy sector. Let them not be able to achieve a perfect result, but no additional megawatts sun will not be superfluous.

Based on the materials Bi-bi-si and other sources.