Episode Details

Today’s missive comes to you from the Galapagos Islands out in the eastern Pacific, where two stories of noble energy initiatives reflect the broader realities of energy policy around the world. 

We tell these stories with a specific question in mind: how much gas, so to speak, is left in the tank of this energy bull market?

The Galapagos population is only around 30,000, but, as a fully functioning society, the same dynamics observed in this small ecosystem occur elsewhere, even if less visibly, so it serves as a useful case study.

So we come to the first of our two stories.

Not so green transport in Galapagos

In order to limit traffic, protect the environment in this most ecologically delicate of places and protect the taxi industry, the local government made it extremely difficult to get a vehicle licence. All sorts of problematic bureaucratic hurdles had to be jumped, and most people ended up using bikes or public transport.

But then in 2016 the powers that be, with a brighter, greener future in mind, decided that anyone could get a licence to own a vehicle, no permit required - as long as it was an electric vehicle. 

There was just one condition. The buyer had to have a family. 

Given that most people on the islands have relations, that was a pretty easy condition to meet, even for the single folk. 

There was a great deal of PR and fanfare about this new initiative: clean, green, sustainable - all that stuff - and a blind eye was turned to the increase in traffic, or of roadkill to the many tame birds on the streets of the island (this is a major problem).

At this point it’s worth reminding ourselves that there are, around the world, three main areas of energy consumption - transportation, heating and electricity. While cleaner forms of energy, such as nuclear or wind, might be increasing as sources of electricity, 84% of global energy still derives from the burning of fossil fuels, as the graphic below from Our World In data shows.

Even electricity, despite its green credentials, still relies on fossil fuels. The burning of the fossil fuel may be out of sight and, therefore, out of mind, but over 60% of global electricity still derives from it, as our second graphic shows. 

Wind and solar between them account for barely 10%.

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As we are all now discovering to our cost, despite many years of considerable investment, some might say over-investment, in green energy, there have, simultaneously, been many years of underinvestment in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, nuclear power (the use of which in electricity has, on a relative basis, been declining since the 1990s) and public grids. Hence the current energy shortages especially in Europe. The Galapagos Islands followed the international trends in this regard - which is one reason this story makes for such an interesting case study.

Here on the Galapagos Islands, the majority of electricity, despite what you may read, is produced by burning diesel. And at this point we deviate to story number two.

The Galapagos wind turbines.

There were, once upon a time, some wind turbines built by a consortium of overseas energy corporations, looking to advertise their green credentials to the world. Said corporations conducted a one-year study of wind on the island and concluded that next to the airport (where they would also conveniently be seen by everyone arriving at and leaving the islands) was the best place to erect the turbines.

The turbines were duly installed, the publicity was had - here is the world’s first airport that runs 100% on wind and solar, all that stuff - and the energy companies retired back to their nation states.

It turned out that year of the study had been an outlier for winds, and they hadn’t built the turbines in anything like the windiest spot. 

Then the wind turbines stopped working, but nobody