Tonga firms up actions to address sustainable mobility

19 October, 2021. Following the adoption of the PCREEE’s Business Plan, the PCREEE’s sustainable mobility programme was presented to a Transportation Stakeholders’ Consultation Workshop at Nukuálofa on 19 October.

Based on Tonga’s NDC (2015), the highest GHG emitting sector is the transport sector (40%) followed by the electricity sector (23%), agriculture (21%), waste (11%) and others (5%). Transport and the electricity sector which are the biggest consumers of fossil fuel in the country and therefore  account for more than a half of the country’s GHG emission.  

Energy Efficiency in the Land Transport sector is highlighted as one of the priority initiatives under the mitigation sector of the country’s GCF Planning Framework. The Tonga Energy Efficiency Master Plan (TEEMP) acknowledges the key role of the transport sector in reducing the country’s GHG emissions and highlighted that electric mobility as a key measure in addressing the future growth in its GHG emissions.

The workshop was therefore to engage and get inputs from relevant agencies on developing interventions that could facilitate the transition to a low carbon transportation system in Tonga, and to be incorporated in the Tonga Energy RoadMap Plus (2021-2035).

Sione Misi of the PCREEE presented PCREEE’s e-mobility programme to the workshop. Among the events conducted in this programme are the identification of policy, institutional, financial and technical barriers to energy efficiency in the land transport sectors of Vanuatu and the Solomon Is and the development of funding proposals for the removal of those barriers. The PCREEE has also been supporting Samoa’s recent  Sustainable Energy Awareness programme which focussed on electric mobility.  A EV battery swapping project is being discussed with the Cook Is while a e-taxi pilot project is being discussed with a company in Fiji. The PCREEE’s offer to develop Tonga’s emobility policy, standards and guidelines was also confirmed to the workshop.  

The workshop was convened by the Department of Energy, under the Ministry of MEIDECC with the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) and was funded by New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade under their Low Emission Climate Resilient Development (LECRD) programme.  .

ENDS

Useful link:
PCREEE EV Readiness Programme (PEV ReadPro) | PCREEE

Media Contact: 
Sione Misi, Pacific Islands Energy Professional - sionem@spc.int / sione.misi@pcreee.org