Because of their geographical isolation it is well known that islands have an high dependence to fossil fuel
for their energy requirements. One of the main characteristic of these remote territories is an electricity
production that still rely heavily on carbon-based sources. This electricity mix highlights an energy vulnerability
to exogenous instabilities on the international market. This high share of fossil fuel lead to the
electricity price volatility, [1] and is the main contributor to the global emissions of greenhouses gases, [2]
[3] [4]. Nonetheless, these territories are generally endowed with high potential for renewable energy sources
(RES) . Madagascar has proposed during the COP21 conference an ambitious objective of 14% reduction
of GHG by 2020. To achieve this, the government expects international assistance for development of RES
for electricity generation. As Reunion island is a french overseas territory, is committed with Europe to
reduce its emissions by 40% by 2030. Madagascar and Reunion, two islands located in Indian Ocean, were
chosen because of their socio-economic differences and common issues :
– Demographic transition incomplete
– Different poverty rate
– High dependence to fossil fuels
– Ambition to increase RES share
In the last decades, ISO 14040 from Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) guidelines has been widely used to
evaluate environmental impact of energy production. The objective of this paper is to provide an LCAbased
approach to evaluate future plausible energy scenarios under insular context. This study first presents
the electricity mix for the two islands.