A delegation from Seychelles will be going to China to meet with various factories and, if all goes well, sign a memorandum of understanding under which the island nation will receive 22 new electric and hybrid buses for the Seychelles Public Transport Corporation (SPTC).

The Minister for Transport, Antony Derjacques, announced on Tuesday when answering a private notice question from Sebastien Pillay, the Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly.   

"In line with the reorganisation in the Seychelles Public Transport Corporation, we have introduced an e-mobility project and very soon in August, the chief executive of SPTC, the principal secretary, and others will be going to China and they will be engaging with factories with the help of the Chinese government," said Derjacques.

This is part of the e-mobility project launched in November 2022 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 upscaling and the development of adequate electric mobility policies.

International experts from UNEP-GEF visited Seychelles in May 2023 for the project, which will span over four years.

In the first part of the project, SPTC expects to introduce full electric buses to their fleet. Currently, SPTC has 200 buses that complete over 1,400 journeys per day and use approximately 220,000 litres of fuel per month.

The Cabinet of Ministers in April approved the signing of the Global Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Zero Emission Medium-and Heavy-Duty Vehicles. The MOU was presented at a high-level event in December 2023 at the 28 Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Dubai.

The MOU, which is led by CALSTART, a Dutch company based in the United States, commits countries to work together to enable 100 percent zero-emission new truck and bus sales by 2040 with an interim goal of 30 percent zero-emission vehicle sales by 2030, to facilitate achievement of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.