(Seychelles News Agency) - The Seychelles Public Transport Corporation (SPTC) will debut its electric public buses in four years' time as the island nation aims to have a fully electric transport system in the future, said a top official.

The E-mobility project which was launched officially on Thursday will take four years to complete and will be implemented with the help of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The main objective of the project is to mitigate GHG emissions by accelerating the introduction of electric mobility in Seychelles through public transportation, capacity building, and preparation of up scaling and the development of adequate electric mobility policies

“This project will enable us to prepare the environment in Seychelles, so that we can bring more electric vehicles in the country, with the aim of reducing our carbon emissions,” said Elvis Octave, the chief technical advisor for E-Mobility.

In the first part of the project, SPTC will introduce full electric buses to their fleet.

SPTC’s chief executive, Jeffy Zialor, said that at first one bus will be used for a feasibility study. This will help the company learn more about how such buses will adapt to the terrain, the range it will drive with a single charge, the charge times and other data will be collected.

“At present, SPTC has 200 buses which complete over 1,400 journey per day and use approximately 220,000 litres of fuel per month,” said Zialor, during a short presentation.

At the moment, fully electric cars are expensive in Seychelles, compared to the conventional internal combustion engine vehicles, and there are no charging stations available.

This is one thing that the project will be looking and it will include building the proper infrastructure and put in place financial schemes to make electric vehicles more affordable to private owners.

It will also include the development of a preliminary scheme for extended producer responsibility for the collection of EV Batteries.

“We will be working on a scheme, which will help us decide what can be done with EV batteries, where we can use it for energy storage in other areas, as well as how to recycle them, so as to limit any environmental impacts it may have,” said Octave.

He added that for the charging of such vehicles, SPTC will be looking at renewable energy sources such as solar power.

Octave said that some of the benefits of the project for Seychelles will be a reduction in local air pollution, reduced dependency on fossil fuels, the creation of opportunities for innovative business model in public transportation and long term environmental and economic sustainability.