President of BREA, Aidan Rogers (right), along with Executive Director, Clyde Griffith, held a press conference at BREA’s offices in the Central Bank of Barbados, to provide an update on the organisation’s upcoming regional energy conference to be held under the theme, ‘Sustainable Caribbean Energy Independence: Making It Happen’.
Call for clear policy to guide renewable energy sector
Tue, 11/01/2016 - 12:00am
THE Barbados Renewable Energy Association (BREA) has made a call for a “clear policy” to be put in place to guide the renewable energy sector and to serve as a roadmap for sustainable energy in Barbados.
The call came yesterday from President of BREA, Aidan Rogers, as he, along with Executive Director Clyde Griffith, held a press conference at BREA’s offices in the Central Bank of Barbados, to provide an update on the organisation’s upcoming regional energy conference. The conference is scheduled for November 10 and 11 at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre, under the theme “Sustainable Caribbean Energy Independence: Making It Happen”.
“Quite frankly, what we would really like to see is a policy actually in place. What we have had really, is what you can best describe as a staccato or ad hoc approach, where we have answered certain technical questions. We’ve [also] done some regulator experimentation by the FTC (Fair Trading Commission), the utility company would have done a technical study to see how much their grid can accommodate in terms of wind and solar, this is intermittent technologies and through that ad hoc approach, we have made significant strides, we cannot discount that. But to go to the next level, particularly in keeping with the new figures that the Prime Minister would have announced a month ago, that we are looking at 65 per cent renewable penetration by 2030, that penetration level can only be founded by a clear policy,” Rogers remarked.
“BREA is currently sitting on the National Task Force for Energy, (which) had been tasked since October 2015, with responsibility for arriving at a roadmap and a National Sustainable Energy Policy, because there has only been a draft policy to date. The final policy we are hoping to have hopefully before the end of this year and that would actually create the actual contextual framework in which that 65 per cent target can really be structured,” Rogers also commented.
“Policy needs to drive how the legislation is formed. Policy needs to drive how the regulator treats to that legislation, in terms of how they would establish what is the right tariff or price setting mechanism. So policy is very important, but we haven’t solidified the actual policy parameters as yet. We only have a draft policy and as I said, we have been rather successful in trying to work with what we have or what we don’t have in an adhoc manner and that is still commendable for all the parties (involved),” Rogers added. (RSM)