The EU Outermost Regions - OR (Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Mayotte, Reunion, Saint-Martin, the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands) can be characterised by a set of common characteristics:
- They are all small in terms of land area, far away from continental Europe and, with one exception (French Guiana), they are all small islands or groups of islands (archipelagos);
- In terms of energy supply, and despite the important natural renewable energy sources that most OR have, better than in continental Europe, all the OR are mostly heavily dependent on imported oil; The electric grids in the ORs are all, without exception, isolated, unconnected to the continental grids. In archipelagos, with few exceptions, each island is an isolated grid (in Guadeloupe, three smaller islands are connected by submarine cable to the main island and, in the Canary Islands, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura are also interconnected by a submarine cable). In French Guiana, the electric grid only covers part of the territory (closer to the coast) and there are small isolated systems to provide power to isolated communities in the rest of the OR– there are no connections to the neighbouring countries either;
- Renewable Energy sources represent between 1.5% (Saint Martin) and 64% (French Guiana) of the total electricity supply (see table 1). The higher percentages correspond to OR with hydro and geothermal resources that are able to provide stable power supply, unaffected by the large fluctuations associated to solar, wind and other renewable sources;