Not rated — no significant reservoirs
Vanuatu is set aside from the ranking rather than graded. Having no significant reservoir storage is a geographic fact, not a transparency failure — so assigning an “F” would be misleading.
H1 2026 Evaluation
Vanuatu Reservoir Transparency
N/AWhy it's not rated
Only small run-of-river hydropower with negligible impoundment.
Where its water comes from
Groundwater and stream intakes (UNELCO / VUI).
Reference source
No centralized national reservoir data. Utilities Regulatory Authority Vanuatu / UNELCO ENGIE / VUI
https://ura.gov.vu/Evaluator notes
Vanuatu's RTI score reflects both the structural characteristics of its water infrastructure and an acute deficit in data transparency. The country's hydropower assets are predominantly run-of-river diversions with limited impoundment capacity rather than large storage reservoirs, which reduces the volume of 'reservoir level' data that would exist even under ideal transparency. The principal operators — UNELCO (French multinational, operating under a concession) and VUI (government-owned) — neither publish operational hydrological data nor appear to be required to do so by the Utilities Regulatory Authority. The 2024 Biennial Transparency Report submitted to the UNFCCC demonstrates that Vanuatu has capacity for structured national reporting in the energy sector, but this does not extend to water-resource transparency. ADB's Energy Access Project and SPREP's regional data portals (vanuatu-data.sprep.org) contain electricity statistics but not reservoir storage data. Regional capacity-building through SPC and SPREP could eventually provide the institutional foundation for a water-level reporting system, but no timeline is apparent.
Evaluated by Jaime Delgado · 2026-09-15 · Methodology v1.3.0