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A remote island ditched fossil fuels in just 2 years. Here's how they did it.

Small towns often have a lot of pride in being independent. But it's hard to get more independent than T'au.

Image from SolarCity/YouTube.

Ta'u is a beautiful island full of tropical forests and amazing beaches. It's part of American Samoa, an unincorporated territory of the United States. But for technically being part of the United States, it's really, really far away.

How far? It's over 4,000 miles away from the continental United States. In fact, it's actually closer to Australia than America.

Image from The National Park Service.

For years, T'au's roughly 600 residents have gotten their electricity from diesel generators.

They get the diesel from overseas, and it's brought in on ships. That can be a problem because when you're that far away, you can't always count on everything working out perfectly. Storms or bad weather can keep the ships away. If the ships don't come in, the island doesn't get power.

“I recall a time they weren’t able to get the boat out here for two months,” Keith Ahsoon told SolarCity. That's two months of rationing for homes, hospitals, even the island's freshwater pumps.

"It's hard to live not knowing what's going to happen. I remember growing up using candlelight. And now, in 2016, we were still experiencing the same problems."

But now, the residents of T'au decided to change things up: They're ditching the diesel and going truly independent.

Image from SolarCity/YouTube.

Instead of relying on the sometimes-unreliable shipments of diesel fuel, Ta'u and American Samoa worked with Tesla and SolarCity to build a giant solar-powered microgrid.

How big is it? The grid will produce as much power every year as 109,500 gallons of diesel fuel — enough to basically run the entire island off solar energy. Nearly 100%. And cloudy days? Not a problem. They've installed about 60 of SolarCity's Powerpacks. These mega-batteries will store the extra power Ta'u gets from the tropical sun and distribute it at night. They can run the entire island for three days, if need be.

Image from SolarCity/YouTube.

This kind of grid costs a bit to build, but now all the money that was going abroad for fuel can stay in Samoa.

According to Radio New Zealand, the microgrid took two years to build and cost about $8 million. That's a pretty penny, but it could turn out to be a pretty good investment because the diesel cost American Samoa about $400,000 a year, says The Guardian.

"Before today, every time we turned on the light, turn on the television, turn on maybe the air conditioner, all of the cash registers in China, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia go 'cha-ching,' but not after today," Jon Yoshimura of SolarCity told Radio New Zealand. "We will keep more of that money here, where it belongs."

The Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Interior also chipped in. A similar project is in the works for another nearby island too. And Utu Abe Malae, head of the American Samoa Power Authority, told The Guardian that American Samoa hopes to be fully solar-powered by 2040.

There are a lot of reasons people are looking into renewable energy. Energy independence is one of them.

In the future, we may see small communities like T'au all across the United States declaring their energy independence.

Heroes

This glow-in-the-dark bike path shows what happens when you let imaginations run wild.

Poland just wrote a glow-in-the-dark love letter to bicycles.

And no, that's not what you see after you die. That's a bike path in Poland that's designed to glow in the dark. It was unveiled near the town of Lidzbark Warmiński in late September.

It glows blue because of special luminophores built into the pavement.

The synthetic materials absorb energy from the sun during the day and slowly release it at night. The company who built them says they can last for more than 10 hours at a time.

The company that built the path said they were inspired by the Netherland's "Starry Night" bike path but decided to take it a step further. While the "Starry Night" path uses electric LEDs, the new blue path needs no electricity whatsoever.

The path is a test run to see if the technology can be used on a wide scale all over the country.

Right now, the track is only 100 meters long. It's currently being tested to see if stands up to weather and traffic and whether they can build it more economically. Currently, the path seems to be more of a novelty than anything else — a way to beautify the biking experience — but if the results hold up, it's possible we could use this glow-in-the-dark technology to help improve road safety all over the world.

(By the way, the company that built this has also experimented with trying to impregnate asphalt with citrus, strawberry, and rose scents.)

Cycling is an awesome way to commute, get exercise, and clean up the environment.

A lot of European cities have embraced the bike, and many American cities are catching on as well.

While we still need to improve our biking infrastructures overall, this glow-in-the-dark road shows that infrastructure projects don't have to be boring. They can be imaginative, innovative, and beautiful, too.

Heroes

How Hawaii turned its amazing surfing into renewable energy.

Hawaii is basically where good little surfers get to go when they die.

I mean, can you ask for a more picturesque location? Warm weather, sandy beaches, the majesty of the Pacific Ocean right in front of your face. Imagining standing there, watching those beautiful, aquamarine waves roll in … man, you can’t help but feel a little amped up, right?

But now, those waves are electrifying more than just surfers. They're also powering homes.

Photo by Northwest Energy Innovations.

In Kaneohe Bay, barely noticeable from shore, two wave turbine machines bob in the surf. Since this summer, they’ve steadily been producing electricity, funneling it back through undersea cables to a nearby military base and onto the Oahu power grid.

These are the United States’ first grid-connected wave energy generators. They were set up by the Navy, which is interested in testing them as power sources for refueling stations and remote communities.

"More power from more places translates to a more agile, more flexible, more capable force," the AP quoted Joseph Bryan, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy, as saying. "So we're always looking for new ways to power the mission."

If they work,  communities all across America’s coastlines could use them, not just the Navy.

The Hawaii site is testing two different designs of wave energy makers.

An expert shows off a model of the devices. Photo from Cathy Bussewitz/AP.

The first is called Azura, and it looks kind of like a hefty version of a football goalpost. The other’s called Lifesaver, and it looks, well, kind of like a huge lifesaver. The researchers are putting the devices through the gauntlet to see which design will most reliably put out power and withstand the ocean’s tremendous forces and corrosive salt spray.

Between the two, they’re producing about enough energy to power just over a dozen homes right now. But later versions might be able to juice up hundreds of homes at a time, and they could be set up in big groups as well.

Imagine if these generators were set up on every coastline.

"When you think about all of the states that have water along their coasts ... there's quite a bit of wave energy potential," the AP quoted Jose Zayas, a director of the Wind and Water Power Technologies Office at the U.S. Energy Department, as saying. He also suggested that if we were to really get our heads in the game, 20% to 28% of all of our electricity could eventually come from the ocean.

Other researchers are currently planning on building test sites in Oregon and California, too.

That said, wave power is one area of renewable energy where we’ve been lagging behind in the U.S. We’ll need to build a more large-scale infrastructure — something other countries are already doing — if we actually want to make this work. In Scotland, for example, they have been experimenting with wave and tidal energy for more than a decade.

A wave energy device in Scotland. Photo from P123/Wikimedia Commons.

The good news, though, is that we can learn from other countries’ experiences and use them as a guide as we try to get in the game.

Hawaii has given itself a mandate to be completely powered by renewables by 2045, which is a huge goal.

It's a smart plan for the collection of islands because otherwise they have to rely on giant, expensive container ships to deliver fossil fuels.

The ocean is one of the greatest natural wonders on our planet, and it has given us so much — food, transportation, and, yes, totally amazing surfing spots. And if we keep focusing on the ocean, maybe it can give us renewable energy, too.

Heroes

How Costa Rica went without fossil fuels for 76 days and what we can learn from it.

While we were all playing Pokémon Go, Costa Rica helped save the planet.

If Costa Rica were a kid going back to school, it would have a pretty awesome story to tell when asked what it did over its summer vacation.

Image via iStock.

"Oh nothing. I just ran entirely on renewable energy for 76 days. BOOYAH!" Costa Rica would say proudly.

OK, so this is the Costa Rican women's volleyball team celebrating their own victory at the Rio Olympics, but they'd probably be pretty pumped about renewable energy too. Photo by Yasuyoshi Chiba/Getty Images.

According to the Costa Rica Electricity Institute (ICE), from June 17 through Aug. 31, 100% of Costa Rica's energy needs were met by renewable energy, predominantly from hydropower.

Cayuita, Costa Rica. Photo by Armando Maynez/Flickr.

This makes  considering the small country is overflowing with various bodies of water.

Costa Rican waterfall. Photo by Luke H. Gordon/Flickr.

Hydropower supplied 80% of the country's energy requirements, followed by geothermal at 12%, and wind at 7%. Solar only contributed 0.01%, but that was to be expected considering how often it rains there.

As exciting as this news is, it's only about half of Costa Rica's environmentally conscious accomplishments concerning energy production over the past year.

Even more impressive, the country has accumulated over 150 days of 100% clean electricity this year to date, according to the National Center of Energy Control.

One of Costa Rica's hydroelectric dams. Photo by Ezequiel Becerra/Getty Images.

"We are a small country with great goals!" ICE wrote on its Facebook page. "We remain committed to the goal of carbon neutrality by 2021."

They're well on their way, too. In 2015, the country managed to produce 99% of its energy through renewables.

It should be noted, of course, that Costa Rica is a small country and therefore doesn't need to generate as much power as, say, America.

And, as mentioned, Costa Rica has a ton of water power from which to pull energy.

Hydroelectric power plant. Photo by Ezequiel Becerra/Getty Images.

But that doesn't mean its achievement should be discounted. If anything, it's a shining example of what a country can do with the natural resources it has.

Costa Rica joins a number of other smaller countries making the deliberate shift toward complete reliance on renewable energy.

On Aug. 7, 2016, Scotland, which boasts the largest oil reserve in the European Union, produced enough energy from wind turbines to power the country for an entire day.

Wind turbines in Scotland. Photo by Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images.

While that may not sound like a lot compared to Costa Rica's two-month renewable power feat, when you consider that Scotland is one-third larger than Costa Rica and that wind power typically produces less energy than hydropower, it's still a pretty impressive achievement.

Meanwhile, Germany is sprinting ahead when it comes to production of solar energy. On June 25, 2015, 78% of the country's electricity demands were met by solar power.

Electrician at Gehrlicher Solar company checking panels. Photo via AFP/Getty Images.

These countries' renewable energy models may be difficult for larger countries to emulate exactly, but their efforts are inspiring nonetheless.

In order for renewable energy to really make an impact worldwide, there's a lot that will need to be done in terms of city planning, allocating costs, etc. But these small models prove it can be done with a little ingenuity and concerted effort.  

In fact the United States, Mexico, and Canada are taking a lesson from these star student countries and have already pledged to have 50% of their power come from renewable energy by 2025.

Renewable energy classes are officially in session. Take a seat, rest of the world.

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