Hanging with the P.M. in Vanuatu

In 2003, I traveled to Vanuatu in the South Pacific to shoot a video segment for the documentary we were shooting at that time. It was titled, The Hydrogen Age.   This was the same trip that included the hairiest airliner approach and landing I have ever experienced. See my blog entry dated, 8/7/12.

We choose to do this segment in Vanuatu for a couple of reasons.  First of all, it is an independent nation that suffers in the strangle hold of big oil.   Like the rest of the world, Vanuatu is dependent on oil. In Vanuatu, that dependence is total and unequvocal.  There are only two or three power stations in the entire country.  They all run on imported fuel oil brought in by tanker.  The capitol, Port Vila has electricity.  There is also a power station on Espirito Santo, which incidentally is the island where James Michener was stationed during World War Two.  It was there, that he wrote his famous novel, South Pacific.  Anyway,  Vanuatu spends abiout 80% of its national budget buying fuel oil for it's power stations.  There is no money for roads; no money for lighting in rural schools; no money for any kind of big intiative that would advance the welfare of the Vanuatuan people.

My friend, marine biologist Richard Chesher, was spending alot of time in Vanuatu at that time.  He was acquainted with many of that nations's prominent government officials.  I talked to Rick about my media work focused on renewables and hydrogen in particular.  Almost immediately, he saw the impact it could have on that nation.

Vanuatu has an abundance of renewable energy resources including a lot of wind, solar, tidal, and perhaps most important, significant untapped geothermal potential.   If Vanuatu could tap that energy and find a way to store it for use on demand, they could end their dependence on oil. Not only that, they could become a net energy exporter. What hydrogen provided was the means to take Vanuatu's captured renewable energy potential into a clean, storable form of energy that could be used on demand, when and where needed. Hydrogen was the key. It was a gamechanger.

Rick Chesher began talking up hydrogen and renewables to his friends in government. He formed a company with some prominent local leaders. They got the Prime Minister, Eduard Natapei, interested. The P.M. saw that his nation's renewable energy potential combined with hydrogen's ability to be used as a clean energy currency, could have a profoundly positive impact on the future of his people.  






Port Vila, Capitol of Vanuatu

My co-producer on The Hydrogen Age, Bill Hoagland, and I decided that Vanuatu's potential with renewably produced hydrogen was a story that should be included in our documentary.

Within a few weeks, I was on my way to Sydney, Australia, and from there, it was on to Vanuatu, where I experienced the white knuckle arrival of my life. See blog entry dated 8/7/12.

Rick had friends at Vanuatu's national television station. It's called TV Blong Vanuatu.  They wanted replacement lithium batteries for their field ENG video cameras.  We made a deal. I brought some of the new batteries for them; they provided one of their video crews to me. 

The day after I arrived in Vanuatu, Rick Chesher and I went to meet the Prime Minister, Eduard Natapei, at his office.






Eduard Natapei

The P.M. was a very affable fellow. It was no wonder he was a successful politician.  I was prepared to conduct the interview with him in his office. Instead, he says,  let's go and see some things.  So, we headed out in a couple of cars. Vanuatu is a friendly place. No big security detail.  As soon as we left Port Vila, the roads turned from asphalt to gravel.  There was no money in the government treasury to pave roads outside of the capitol.  Halfway around the island,  we stopped .  The P.M. led us on foot off the road to an unndeveloped meadow very close to the ocean.  We were on top of a massive geothermal site. There were pools of boiling hot and steaming water scattered about.  At that location, I conducted the interview with the P.M.  We later visited a village that had no electricity or running water. Every one there subsisted off the land and the sea.  In was in that village, surrounded by the locals, that I gave the Prime Minister a copy of the book, Natural Capitalism.  I had interview one of the book's co-authors, Amory Lovins, at his home in Old Snowmass, Colorado a month or so before my trip to Vanuatu. Amory gave me an autographed copy of Natural Capitalism that was to be given to the P.M.   That was pretty cool; being the link between the great energy guru, Amory Lovins and the Prime Minister of Vanuatu.

All told, I spent about five hours with the P.M. that day. He was very gracious, and I left Vanuatu a few days later,  hoping very much that a start on a new and better future for Vanuatu would soon come in the form of  developemnt support for that country's geothermal resource.    It was exciting to think that my friend Rick Chesher, and I, and my associates working on The Hydrogen Age, might have played a significant part in creating a new energy paradigm for that small island nation.

Unfortuantely, the outcome was not what we had hoped for.   The government of Vanuatu was unable to generate any financial support for developing their indigenous renewable energy resources.  Big Oil's political muscle blocked any such possibility.  To this day, Vanuatu remains economically crippled by its total energy dependence on imported oil.