WHAT IS A SUSTAINABLE ISLAND?

The Chinese philosopher and writer Lao Tzu used to say that "the greatest feats on earth must begin from something small". This motto is easy to apply to our everyday life: we’re unlikely to start making complicated recipes in the kitchen without having first mastered the basics.

If we think, then, of a country’s major goals, such as energy transition, we can see that we need to adopt the same philosophy: begin on a small scale, create and test functioning models and replicate them on a bigger scale, according to need.

In the increasingly secure and sustainable management of an electricity system, for example, small islands lend themselves particularly to the role of a basic model. Given their intrinsic features, they represent unique systems for the consumption and transport of energy resources and the disposal of waste.

The challenges they face in their territory are exactly the same as those on the mainland. It’s the solutions adopted on the islands which offer a real launching pad for new technologies and best practices for energy transmission and consumption.

The main objective is certainly that of creating an energy model which is 100% dependent on renewable sources where, through careful separated waste collection, the materials cycle can be closed. At the same time, water resources need to be managed in a virtuously manner, aimed at thorough recovery and purification for all compatible uses. An island living on sustainability.

Legambiente is active through its Small Island Observatory to understand and analyse the various strategies used on different islands worldwide.

Indeed, there are already very many islands in the Pacific and Atlantic which are leading the energy revolution through the use of innovative methods for managing energy and using local resources. In Italy, the experimental laboratories are currently Giannutri, Giglio and Pantelleria, and entail considerable technological, economic and sustainability challenges, since the objectives and difficulties of smaller islands make managing energy transition even more complicated.

The agreement between Terna and Legambiente, with the smart island project, sets out to create 'smart’ islands, in other words, to move from a non-clean, diesel, low efficiency, high-cost system of generation, which has to tackle a highly variable seasonal electricity demand as a result of tourism, to a self-sustained island energy model, possibly with generation from renewable sources with solar and wind plants, and to create sustainable consumption systems on the island, such as electric cars. As the transmission grid operator, Terna cannot generate or address the end user, but it can provide a “turnkey” package which studies the smaller islands, leaving its management to the operators.