After the first biogas digester ever built in a atoll country, in 2007, Alofa Tuvalu, a French Tuvaluan NGO, working both in Tuvalu and abroad, pursued in 2008, its biomass implementation. On April 26th, the first production of coconut biodiesel and petrol from “todi” (fermented coconut tree sap) was demonstrated.
Tuvalu is the earth's first sovereign nation threatened with becoming totally uninhabitable due to Climate change. It is also the first country too to have started a coherent plan to fight CO2 emissions and fuel increases. In 2006 Alofa Tuvalu’s Renewable Energy Training Center project passed cabinet and parliament. First construction and workshops started in 2007.
The 2008 demonstration of biofuels drew a big crowd and involved many officials. Gilles Vaitilingom, Alofa Tuvalu’s scientist, one of the biofuel world specialists, showed and explained to an audience of over 200 people how to transform coconut oil into biodiesel and todi in petrol. The demonstration ended with todi petrol filling a motorbike tank which started under the audiences applauds.
Far from the passionate debates of “food versus biofuels”, the idea in Tuvalu is to use the material which has not been used for food, on each island. Copra was the main source of income for poor outer island farmers for several decades prior to industry collapse in 2002. By partially replacing diesel used by the interisland boats using locally produced coconut biodiesel it will be possible to re-start the copra industry in the outer-islands when Interislands boat services are currently threatened with stopping due to oil barrel prices regular rises.
A week later, from Gilles Vaitilingom’s sketches, the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute’s team of engineers built a gasifier with material available on the islet and trained around 20 people. It is planned to use the gas to produce electricity for the school. 1,5 kg of organic waste is transformed into 1KWA.
After a first series in 2007, Alofa Tuvalu launched a second series of daily radio programs about biofuel, gasification, biogas, waste and energy efficiency…
The idea for Tuvalu is to become a model to be reproduced elsewhere in order to participate in a global climate movement, with the hope of being able to stay on their land.
It is also around Earth Day that Alofa Tuvalu’s President, Gilliane Le Gallic was offered the title of Ambassador for Environment by Apisai Ielema, Tuvalu’s Prime Minister.
contact : fanny@alofatuvalu.tv
www.alofatuvalu.tv
