Te Atamoa o te Uira Natura: Cook Islands Renewable Energy Chart Implementation Plan, 2012

The Te Atamoa o te Uira Natura: Cook Islands Renewable Energy Chart Implementation Plan recognizes that an overall plan for electricity is necessary to derive the full benefits of investing in renewable power generation. The plan must provide guidance on increase energy efficiency on the supply and demand sides, improved access, reduce environmental impacts, and enhanced energy security, while ensuring financial viability. The Implementation Plan intends to identify the least costly programme to achieve these objectives, as well as recommends a detailed programme of actions with indicative cost for each. It evaluates each potential source of renewable energy in the islands, against the criteria of maturity of technology, social and environmental sustainability, and levelized life cycle cost. Based on the findings, the least cost options are solar photovoltaic and wind without storage. However, high level penetration of these technologies would require storage in the form of batteries. The plan breaks down implementation of the project into two components, for the Outer Islands and for Rarotonga.