Energy transition · Pacific Islands · 2000–2022

The Cost of Growing: The Reality of the Energy Transition in the Pacific Islands

Eidan-Enrique Juárez García · Dalia-Abigail Uscanga-Gutiérrez · Angel Martinez-Mendez · David Martínez-Galicia

0.00%
Pacific Islands 0.03% Rest of the world 99.97%

The bar shows the real share of global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions

Scroll to explore ↓

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions

How much do the Pacific islands really emit?

This project covers the 18 Pacific nations and territories with data reported in the sources consulted (Pacific Data Hub/SPC, IRENA, World Bank); other islands in the region are not shown because of gaps in those databases, not because they don't exist or don't emit.

The 18 Pacific nations and territories together emit around 30 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent a year, less than 0.1% of the world total. That figure, however, is not shared equally among them: some islands emit almost nothing, while one accounts for most of the regional total.

~30 Mt
million tonnes of CO₂eq emitted annually by the 18 islands combined (2021)
Source Sum of national GHG inventories reported to the UNFCCC.
World Bank — Climate Change Data Portal, 2023.
0.6 vs 13
t CO₂ per capita: median of the islands vs New Caledonia, the highest in the region
Source Most islands emit less than 1 t CO₂/capita; New Caledonia, with its nickel industry, reaches ~13 t CO₂/capita.
World Bank — CO₂ emissions per capita, 2021.
67%
of regional GHG emissions come from land-use change and deforestation, not fossil fuels
Source Deforestation in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands is the largest source of GHG emissions across the whole Pacific islands region.
Global Forest Watch / WRI, 2023.

Hover over each figure to see the source

GHG emissions

The region's biggest emitter

Papua New Guinea: 20 million tonnes of CO₂eq (2021), ranked 119th among the world's largest emitters

While Tokelau and Tuvalu emit almost nothing and lead the way on solar power, Papua New Guinea, because of its forests alone, not its energy use, carries almost all of the climate weight that "the Pacific" bears in global statistics.

Source: national emissions inventory, PNG (2021) Source: Global Forest Watch (WRI)

How electricity is generated in the Pacific

Diesel still powers most of the Pacific's electrical grid, but it is no longer the only source.

0 MW
of clean capacity installed in the Pacific: hydro, solar, geothermal, and biomass combined
Source Sum of renewable capacity installed across the 15 Pacific countries taking part in the SIDS Lighthouses Initiative.
IRENA — Pacific Islands, SIDS Lighthouses Initiative.
0%
of that installed capacity is hydroelectric, more than all solar, geothermal, and biomass combined
Source 488 of the Pacific's 750 MW of clean capacity are hydroelectric, compared with 85 MW of solar.
IRENA — Pacific Islands, SIDS Lighthouses Initiative.
1990
year Tokelau became the first territory in the world to generate 100% of its electricity from solar power
Source Tokelau, population 1,500, completed its transition to 100% solar electricity in under a year.
IRENA — Pacific Islands, SIDS Lighthouses Initiative.

Hover over each figure to see the source

Interactive map

Explore island by island

18 Pacific territories, each with its own climate story. Keep scrolling to explore them.

ARCHIPELAGO OF THE PACIFIC TRANSITION

Click each island to explore its energy story · 18 islands, 2000–2022

The 18 nations and territories shown are those with data reported in the sources consulted; their absence from other Pacific territories does not mean they do not exist or do not emit.

Energy Legend

% Ren.
Solar
Wind
Hydro
Diesel
Gas
Coal
Biomass
Each island shows the icon of its most-used generation source. Color: red → green by % renewable.
2022
200020052010201520202022

Click any island on the map to explore its energy transition

Where is the Pacific's renewable energy headed?

Before projecting the future, here is what the historical data (2000–2023) already reveals about how the Pacific's renewable generation is shared, and who concentrates it. Overall, the region increased its renewable generation by 35% over that period, but fossil generation grew at almost the same rate, 39%, so that progress still hasn't translated into a major shift in the clean share of the total.

Tap each card to see how it connects with the others.

Concentration

60%

Papua New Guinea + New Caledonia = 6 out of every 10 renewable GWh in the Pacific, 2023.

which of the two explains it?

Most of that 60% belongs to New Caledonia: Papua New Guinea's renewable generation hasn't grown since the year 2000 (next card).

The one that didn't grow

1 of 18

Only Papua New Guinea generated less renewable power in 2023 than in 2000.

why does it still weigh so much?

Papua New Guinea started from such a large base that, even without growing, it's still one of the two islands with the most renewable generation in the Pacific.

The biggest leap

+338 GWh

New Caledonia nearly doubled its renewable output between 2000 and 2023.

how does it connect to the other two?

It's the real engine behind the first card's 60%: while Papua New Guinea stayed flat, New Caledonia alone drove nearly all of the Pacific's renewable growth.

Source: SPC — Pacific Data Hub, Disaggregated power generation

Regional projection to 2030

Regional renewable generation in the Pacific (2000–2023), with a forecast validated through 2030. Compare here the total amount generated against the amount available per 1,000 people: they're different stories.

It's the same underlying figure, seen two ways. Try both and see how the story the chart tells changes.

Renewable GWh · 2023 2,922 Last year observed
Model validation 1.4% Error forecasting 2023 (real, unseen data)

Solid line: historical 2000–2023. Dashed line: ARIMAX forecast 2024–2030. Shaded band: 95% confidence interval.

Tap any item in the legend above to show or hide that series (historical, forecast, or population).

▸ Methodological basis: ARIMAX(2,0,1)

Year-on-year renewable generation data forms what is known as a time series: the same variable measured repeatedly over time, where each year's value tends to be related to previous years'. An ARIMAX model uses exactly that relationship to project future values.

To choose it, 96 ARIMAX specifications were evaluated (combinations of p∈[0,3], d∈[0,2], q∈[0,3], with and without exogenous population and total-emissions variables), validated through backtesting: each model was trained on 2000–2018 data and evaluated by forecasting 2019–2023 against the real observed values, which were not used in training, instead of selecting purely by historical fit (AIC/BIC), which doesn't guarantee real predictive power.

The ARIMAX(2,0,1) model with population and emissions as exogenous variables achieved the lowest forecast error (RMSE=55, MAPE=1.4%) and was the only one of the top ten models whose residuals show no significant autocorrelation (Ljung-Box test, p=0.66) and do not depart from normality (Jarque-Bera test, p=0.99), validating the assumptions needed for the reported confidence interval to be interpretable.

* ARIMAX(2,0,1) forecast of regional renewable GWh, 2000–2023, with population and total emissions as exogenous variables (also forecast). The bands represent the 95% confidence interval. Source: Pacific Data Hub, Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC).

Pacific Islands population

Who lives in the Pacific islands today?

The 18 Pacific nations and territories together are home to around 13 million people. Papua New Guinea accounts for more than 70% of that figure; the rest is spread across islands whose total population is, in many cases, smaller than a single neighborhood in any big city.

On several of these islands, population is growing faster than the resources available to adapt to climate change.

Climate migration
280

people from Tuvalu can migrate to Australia with permanent residency each year, under the Falepili Union treaty signed in 2023: the world's first migration pathway created explicitly because of climate change.

Hover to see the figure
Source: Center for Global Development, Falepili Union treaty 2023
Two Pacifics, very different risk
Tuvalu Fiji
0% Live within 1 km of the coast

In Tuvalu, it's impossible to get away from the sea: the entire population lives within 1 km of the coast. In Fiji, a mountainous island, most people live inland.

Tap the switch to compare

Source: Pacific Risk Profiles, DFAT / Pacific Community
Population growth toward 2050
2024 145,000 people

Drag to move forward toward 2050 — each figure stands for more people sharing the same land

Kiribati and Tuvalu will nearly double their population by 2050, but their habitable land stays the same or shrinks. An atoll is a ring of coral islands, just a few meters above sea level, surrounding a central lagoon, with no "inland" to grow into. That's why their density already exceeds 400 people per km², among the highest in the world.

Source: SPC — Population projections

The map showed islands. The model showed a trajectory.
What's left is understanding what they mean together.

What this project found

+0%
renewable generation
2000 → 2023
Accumulated growth in clean energy across the whole region over two decades.
+0%
fossil generation
2000 → 2023
Grew at almost the same rate as renewables, which is why the clean share barely changed.
0%
of everything generated
in 2023 was renewable
Less than a third of all Pacific energy is clean today.
−0%
renewable per capita
projected to 2030
Population is growing faster than the clean energy available per person.

Tap or hover over each figure to see its explanation.

Conclusion

The transition has already begun, but it's advancing alongside diesel, not in its place.

Before projecting the future, here is what the historical data (2000–2023) already reveals about how the Pacific's renewable generation is shared, and who concentrates it. Overall, the region increased its renewable generation by 35% over that period, but fossil generation grew at almost the same rate, 39%, so that progress still hasn't translated into a major shift in the clean share of the total.

Both curves rise together because they respond to the same pressure: a growing population that needs more electricity every year. Emissions aren't a separate phenomenon, they're the direct consequence of the fossil production that keeps sustaining that demand.

An island depending more on diesel doesn't mean that's the whole explanation for its emissions: the data shows a relationship, not the complete story.

Project limitations
  • The project covers only the 18 islands and territories with data reported in the sources consulted (Pacific Data Hub, SPC); other Pacific territories are not shown for lack of data, not because they don't exist or don't emit.
  • Some variables aren't available for every island or every year; those gaps are shown as missing, not as zero.
  • The forecast only covers regional-level renewable generation (not by island, and not fossil): it was the only case that passed the model's statistical validation tests.
Methods and Sources

Data on per capita greenhouse gas emissions, the share of renewable energy in total final energy consumption, disaggregated power generation, and population growth, taken from the Pacific Data Hub (Secretariat of the Pacific Community, SPC). The site is built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, using Canvas for the interactive map and the animations. The forecast model (ARIMAX) was developed in Python with statsmodels and pmdarima, testing 96 parameter combinations per series and validating each one against 2019-2023 before choosing the final one.

  • Pacific Data Hub (SPC) — Climate Change: GHG emissions per capita
  • Pacific Data Hub (SPC) — SDG: Renewable energy share in final energy consumption
  • Pacific Data Hub (SPC) — Power Generation: disaggregated electricity generation
  • Pacific Data Hub (SPC) — Population projections and NMDI population estimates
  • World Bank — Climate Change Data Portal (CO₂ emissions, national inventories)
  • Global Forest Watch / World Resources Institute (WRI) — deforestation emissions
  • IRENA — Pacific Islands, SIDS Lighthouses Initiative (installed renewable capacity)
  • DFAT / Pacific Community — Pacific Risk Profiles (Tuvalu coastal exposure)
  • Center for Global Development — Australia-Tuvalu Falepili Union treaty (2023)

The data sources for each visualization are listed below or next to their respective sections; all datasets are open data.

Pacific Data Visualization Challenge
✦ end of the journey ✦

Thank you for exploring the Pacific islands with us.