by Preetvy Ramasamy

Created on: June 19, 2008

The increasing cost of oil is affecting the price of many products around the world. This is because many of these products or the raw materials from which they are made are somewhat related to oil. Since industrialisation and mechanisation, our dependency on oil has only increased: from machines used in every step of chain production to the simple vehicles used in transportation. Countries importing commodities have hence been facing price increases in a lot of products as that of oil goes up.

In the middle of the Indian Ocean, in the tropical island of Mauritius, land is very limited and sums to 720 square metres. Moreover, we have as natural resources, only this limited land and our man power. Meaning that we have to import almost everything we use. To cater for the increasing price of our imports - which is mainly due to the increasing cost of oil - several measures are being taken by the people and Government with the support of our institutions and the private sector.

Since energy generation in Mauritius has, since now, been relying mostly on heavy oil, the Mauritian Government has started a project in partnership with the French Government to increase our energy generation from renewable resources. Till now, only about 4 percent of energy consumption were being generated from hydropower stations; the project named by the French "Maurice Ile Durable" which means Durable Mauritius will include the installation of several wind turbines, photo voltaic cells - being in the tropics, we enjoy the sun all year round - and power generation from ethanol which is itself made from sugarcane plants available in Mauritius. There is also the long term project of building another hydropower station.

Furthermore, in Mauritius, a series of sensitization campaigns have been launched to attract the people's attention to the serious energy crisis. People are also being encouraged to replace all their lights by economic ones: to ensure so, the government has decided to reduce the latter's price and as first move, have all lights used in parks and on roads replaced by economic ones.

Because vehicles use a great percentage of the imported petrol/oil, it has also been decided that part of the ethanol being produced will be used as fuel for road vehicles, in a mixture of ethanol and petrol. Note that this is already being done in Brazil. There is also encouragement to buy hybrid cars on which several taxes and registration fees have been removed.

The Mauritian Government is also paying

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