CDB presses Caricom to transition to renewables

Jun 21, 2022 News

– but VP Jagdeo says solar, wind, hydro options too expensive for Guyana

Kaieteur News – Energy security is on top of the agenda for Caribbean countries and President of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Dr. Hyginus ‘Gene’ Leon, underscored the urgent need for the region to accelerate the transition to renewable energy.

President of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Dr. Hyginus ‘Gene’ Leon.

This was highlighted during his address at the opening ceremony of the bank’s 52nd Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors last week in the Turks and Caicos Island.
Dr. Leon stated that energy is an essential input into all economic activity and it is a critical ramification in the social and environmental context. He added that the regions high dependency on imported fossil fuels, not forgetting the associated high cost of electricity has been stifling the pace of growth of development in the Caribbean.
He also pointed out that the dependency on fossil fuels is a continued threat to the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To this end, the CDB president said, “As such, there is a dire and urgent need to accelerate the transition to increase renewable energy generation utilising our abundant solar, wind, hydro and geothermal resources.”
However, he emphasised that while doing the aforementioned, it is important that the transition to renewables is managed in a manner to reduce the potential of negative effects or disruption. He noted that the cost for disruption cannot be ignored and therefore the pace at which the region makes that transition has to be an essential element of that development agenda.
Dr. Leon underlined that some of CDB’s Borrowing Member Countries (BMCs) such as: Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) economies are largely reliant today on fossil fuels.
“Over the last decade, the region has been pursuing a shift towards sustainable energy through the increased use of renewable energy sources and improvements in energy efficiency,” he added.
The CDB president then explained that the agreed target by the region energy ministers is for a 47 percent contribution from renewable energy by 2027, which he added translates into a 55 percent contribution by 2030. However, Dr. Leon pointed out that the progress towards that target has been slow. He also stated that the current estimate cost for the region to transition to renewables will cost over US$20 billion.
Notably, he then added that at CDB, they are updating the energy sector policy and strategy. It was also stated that the bank have proposed to embed within a framework called the Accelerated Sustainable Energy and Resilience Transition 2030 framework (ASERT 2030), is intended to support its BMC as the region urgently ramp up the energy sector transitions.
The CBD president, comments comes on heels as the world is pushing to transition towards renewable energy. Kaieteur News recently reported that taking its lead from Germany, the European Union (EU) has signaled its intention to embrace renewable energy much faster than was planned, a direct result of the war being waged between Russian and Ukraine. Russia provides much of Europe with its Natural Gas.
As such, the EU is now looking in the interim to make its purchases from other sources, such as Israel but even those supplies would not be adequate leading to the now stated position of accelerating its push towards renewable sources of energy such as solar, wind and hydro among other forms of new clean energy technology being developed.
To this end, the EU, Israel and Egypt last week signed a tripartite natural gas export deal as the bloc seeks to diversify away from Russian energy. The deal, finalised at the East Mediterranean regional energy conference in Cairo, will allow “significant” exports of Israeli gas to Europe for the first time, the Israeli energy ministry said.
Earlier this year, the Government of Barbados inked a deal that in the near future will see the country realising some 178 megawatts of electricity using hydrogen and solar energy at a cost of some US$100M, while in Ethiopia, that country will soon realise 6,500 MW of hydro power electricity at a cost of just over US$600,000 per MW.
With the world on a pathway towards reducing carbon emissions as a result of burning fossil fuels primarily for electricity generation and transportation, Barbados is now leading the Caribbean region with the announcement that it will soon be building the largest clean hybrid power plant in the Caribbean, producing base load power for 16,000 Barbadian households from solar and locally produced green hydrogen.
On the other hand, Guyana’s Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo, who was one of six persons back in 2010 to receive the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Champion of the Earth – at his recent press conference claimed that the generation of power in Guyana through renewable options such as solar, wind and even hydro is “very, very expensive” when compared to the highly touted Gas-to-Energy (GTE) project which will cost billions of US dollars.