The Government of Dominica is currently hosting a series of workshops to explore the possibilities for a national Low Carbon Transport program.
The project was delivered with the partnership of Gutter Consulting and made possible through the financial support of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) in the sum of 10 million dollars.
The workshops are being organized by the Ministry of Planning, Economic Development, Climate Resilience, Sustainable Development, and Renewable Energy.
“We are going to have better financial conditions for people who want to buy an electric car…,” Project Manager at Grutter Consulting, Verena Arauz, said while addressing the opening ceremony on Monday. “We are looking into the Maritime transport as well: boats, engines, outboard engines to test out to see how it works out in the sea. That’s for phase one and after 2025, we are looking into having some 2000 electric vehicles on the island and by 2030, if everything goes well, the government will have incentives enough to say we are going to stop importing fossil fuel vehicles.”
She continued, “By then, hopefully the Geothermal Plant will start working and we are going to have 100% renewable energy.”
Arauz believes that for such a small island, too many people own a car in Dominica, “and that is something that needs to shift.“
She said that there are 40,000 registered vehicles with many of them not being removed from the registry, “but licensed vehicles, we have 18,000 according to the statistics office.”
“The vehicles are old; the idea is not to have more vehicles, but to be replacing them,” Arauz stated.
The Consultant is of the view that a program needs to be put in place in order to get the scrap vehicles out of the island.
“I saw that there were some things done after the hurricane, because you had many derailed vehicles, so there is some experience there, but there needs to be a scrapping program for the vehicles to actually leave the island…,” she stated.
Arauz also pointed out that if there is better public transportation, people might consider selling their old car, opting to not replace it with a new one.
“That’s the way you reduce the number of vehicles, but that’s a long shot,” she conceded. “That is not a problem only in Dominica; that’s a problem everywhere.”
Arauz added, “People once they get used to having a car it is very hard to shift to public transportation.”
Information from https://www.greenclimate.fund/document/low-carbon-transport-dominica states that the Nationally Determined Contribution has a target to reduce absolute Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions by 44.7% by 2030 compared to the emission level of 2014. The transport sector has the largest GHG emissions and is also the sector with the highest GHG growth. Transport emissions shall be reduced by 17% compared to the emission levels of 2014 (due to the strong growth of the transport sector the achievement of this target requires a 40-50% reduction of emissions compared to a Business as Usual trajectory).
Dominica will only be able to achieve its GHG transport target if the trend of increasing transport emissions can be reverted. A wide array of low-carbon transport measures is available including electric vehicles, low-carbon shipping, fostering of public transport, Non-Motorized transport etc. Gaps towards a viable low carbon transport strategy are related to (i) lack of a suitable database and transport / emission modelling (ii) lack of know-how and information to assess viable mitigation options for the transport sector (iii) lack of strategies and related policies to foster low carbon transport and (iv) financial and capacity knowledge gaps to implement low carbon transport strategies.
Dominica is making important steps towards a green electricity production which could form the backbone for an electrified transport system in the country. The country has also recently given tax incentives to hybrid and electric cars.
Direct beneficiaries of the readiness support are government institutions and private sector actors and other stakeholders involved in transport policies and transport services through improved knowledge on options, policies and business models for low-carbon transport.
When the project is implemented there will be a wider net of beneficiaries.
Air quality is a public good and improving air quality through low-emission transport systems improves the health and well-being of all citizens. Reduced reliance on fossil fuel imports also improves the resilience of the country towards external shocks and fuel delivery disruptions.
Electric vehicles as an alternative to internal combustion engines is not an economical viable or sustainable plan. Oil is drilled and pumped through pipes. Some oil fields are massive some wells look like ordinary buildings in the middle of large cities like L.A.
Now cobalt, lithium and iridium are mind through massive open pits sometimes as large as a city. Hundreds of acres destroyed searching for rear earth minerals. The toxic chemicals and the water pollution. If that’s greener then I stand corrected.
Even if dominica went 100% green and didn’t have any pollution. It would not make a single change in global emissions. Larger nations pollute more in a week than we do in 10 years. Wake up stop falling for everything that becomes trendy.
Garcan if allyou want to see change allyou need to establish a trolly service around Roseau!!!
Establish a Public Transportation Sector in the Public office,,,
Build a couple parking structures for that same department to collect revenue from,,,
Provide a Public transportation service around the Roseau Municipality,,,
So when people come to Roseau they park at one of those facilities and hop on and off the Public Transport to facilitate their transactions, then when done they can hop back in the personal vehicles and head back out of town!!!
Stop with allyou madness about Low Carbon Vehicles because there is no such thing!!!
Figure out home much fossil fuel it will take to upkeep those So-called Low Carbon Vehicles and anyone well see that it’s more impacting the environment to maintain that type of infrastructure!!!
for them to run over people more
Too many people own a car in Dominica?
That lady who made this statement should be matched out of Dominica forthwith!
Pie in the sky/fairy-tale. As things stand right now the average cost of an electrical vehicle is US$55,600. When you add shipping, environmental levy, customs service charge, excise tax and VAT you’re looking at EC$250,000. That’s about the same as building a 20′ x 40′ house. You will have time DIE before you realize a saving on the cost of fuel on that vehicle in Dominica? At it’s best, most of us here cannot even buy/import a vehicle under FIFTHTEEN YEARS OLD…! It’s an electric one we can afford?
Dominica also needs bicycle paths so that more manual and electric bikes and scooters can be used.
Roseau don’t even have proper sidewalk, its bicycle path you’re looking to see? Wait still..!
Utter madness!!!
Somebody, explain to me the wisdom & feasibility of using electric vehicles in an island where the electricity supply is prone to being unreliable at times, an island which is under constant threat of hurricane strike which can decimate the electricity grid.
Did we not learn anything from Hurricane Maria’s destruction of the electrical grid? How many electric vehicles would have been able to operate back then considering the months of no electricity? Just imagine what would have happened to Dominica’s recovery if we did not have gas/diesel operated vehicles back then.
PEOPLE BEWARE!!! This climate change nonsense is a nothing more than a well-orchestrated Trojan Horse being used by covert actors to usher in a unified batch of global laws on ALL nations with the sole goal of controlling how we live, how we travel, what we eat etc.
Ask these climate change propagandists for the evidence that proves Hurricane Maria was due to man-induced climate change.
The first part about domlec was okay..but the whole climate change denial part..that’s just not that simple..you/we most definitely need to do some more research.
@DNO Reader – Could you point out to me when since time immemorial was the earth’s climatic & weather patterns ever stuck in a static/non-changing state and/or was supposed to remain (as the norm) in a non-changing state?
Can you present to me the evidence that proves that Hurricane Maria was due to man-induced climate change? I am yet to see any such evidence from the climate change propagandists & adherents on this front.
Since some folks mistakenly think climate change is a new aberrant phenomenon, what then would such persons claim was the cause of Hurricane David in 1979?
Exactly. It’s almost a good thing that our country is just not in the type of conditions for this thing to ever work. Although that won’t stop these insane people from trying and causing serious harm to the country in the process.
@smh – The sole goal of these globalists is CONTROL, CONTROL, CONTROL through any means necessary.
It is ABSOLUTELY STUNNING that anybody in their right mind could be promoting electric vehicles in the hurricane-prone Caribbean region as part of the so-called Resilient-to-Climate-Change developments. ABSOLUTELY STUNNING – ABSOLUTELY FRIGHTENING!!!!!!
I am of the persuasion that the bulk of our leadership in the region are mere puppets – some of these puppets are capable of mesmerizing the masses with charismatic, highfalutin speeches written by their globalist puppet-masters.
I hope we make use of what we have in abundance solar energy in all this charging stations and generating of electricity.
DNO as usual with another propaganda piece to make the incumbent regime seems proactive and futuristic.
This Cabinet of shady characters and lapdogs has shown a gross inability to get anything right. Look around at the public library, the main town-Roseau, the pollution of the rivers, degradation of the environment, et cetera. No honest and serious persons give credence to this government’s empty pronouncements but this news site, Kairi, DBS, GIS and some daft, hardcore water carriers of Roosevelt.
More political rubbish, using this issue as an excuse to belch your political nonsense.
The fact that DNO allows you to post anything you want should give you cause to pause..and you really need to.
How can you compare DNO to Kairi?
Where’s the political slant to this story?
It’s your right to love or hate any political party but there’s a line between constructive criticism and hateful, unhinged vitriol..and you keep crossing that line almost every time you “speak”.
when are people going to realize thats electric cars ARE NOT LOW CARBON CARS. stop falling for that nonsense
Volvo who makes both electric cars and petrol cars have actually done a study that says that it takes over 120000 miles of driving for an electric car to start becoming more environmentally friendly than a petrol car. and the made it clear that that is without having to ever swap a battery. they also said that batteries dont last 120000 mls and most are changed at around 40000 to 60000 miles
and in dominica where the elc supply is made mainly via diesel power . electric cars will actually force domlec to raise prices .
1 more fuel burned to surport the charging
2 upgrading of transmission lines to surport a charge capable grid
and thats just the tip of the iceberg
and dominicans fail to realize when a fully charged car tell you that u have 200miles of range thats in a cool climate in dca that range will be about 120 miles as the battery uses power just to…
You did not even quote the study correctly. The break even point is 70,000 miles and can be as low as 30,000 miles, depending on how the power is generated. These numbers should go down as the technology improves.
The fact is that the world cannot depend on oil forever, Dominica included. We have to prepare for the future.
you do know thats the 30000 miles to 64000 miles is if charged on purely wind generated energy. and thats driving 7400 miles a year. where in dca do people drive that much a year unless you a buss or truck driver. 9 years
WHERE IN DOMINICA CAN YOU SEE WIND ENERGY BEING PRODUCED?
best you move there cause u cherry pick a bit of information and misrepresented that bit of information as well
so you just lie ( well tell half the truth )
thanks for that you just proved you should not join the argument
and the research also says that you have to drive them for up to 9 years before they become more low carbon. in the dominican heat youll be lucky if your batteries last 5 years. you seem to be one of those who jump on a bandwagon and dont even know what the bandwagon is all about