$320M INVESTMENT

Waste-to-energy appears to be on the cards again as an option for the island’s energy mix, with word yesterday that a multimillion-dollar investment was going to be made into that technology.

Speaking yesterday morning as he introduced the Fair Trading Commission (Amendment) Bill and the Utilities Regulation (Amendment) Bill for debate in the Lower House, Minister of Small Business, Entrepreneurship and Commerce, Dwight Sutherland, referred to the plant earmarked for Vaucluse, St. Thomas, as he disclosed that the Fair Trading Commission (FTC) is currently “busy preparing” a rate for the energy that will be generated from biomass technology.

According to Minister Sutherland, the 25-megawatt waste-to-energy/biomass plant will be achieved through an investment of some $320 million. His comments came as he indicated that the waste-to-energy plant will address, among other things, this country’s garbage challenges and its energy needs.

“We are burning organic waste, disposing of organic waste and through the Minister of Agriculture, he will make available all the fallow land, all the idle land to be used for the production of biomass, and he has already identified that. Because when we start this plant, we are looking at 20 per cent local organic waste and we are importing 80 per cent. But that can’t deter us, because all the cost benefit analysis being done by Minister Caddle and her team, and all prospects look good in terms of the return on investment and in terms of what investment will come to this country next year and I think even before, and the creation of jobs,” he said.

Sutherland spoke to the new waste-to-energy idea, while reflecting on the previous attempt by the former administration to go a similar route. He described the 40-megawatt plasma gasification plant, which was to be built by Cahill Energy, a “fiasco”. That plant, he indicated, was to operate using unproven technology, burning 1,000 tonnes of waste per day and the agreement was to sell electricity to the Barbados Light and Power at 66 cents per kilowatt-hour, which he argued would have “raped this country and the taxpayers”. He made the point while noting that the FTC was excluded from the negotiations on that rate.

“When you set up this waste-to-energy plant, this plasma gasification plant, you were going to sell the electricity to Light and Power at 66 cents per kilowatt-hour. Mr. Speaker, members of this Chamber, members of the public, I challenge you to call Light and Power and ask them if this is not one of their gas turbine’s inefficient operations, if this is not the cost of running one of their old gas turbines efficiently... This is what we were going to put in modern Barbados, that rate, and in St. Thomas, in rural Barbados, with temperatures over 1,500 degrees Celsius,” he said.

Sutherland added, “That rate in my view was lotto, jackpot and interest all in one for somebody, and who would have to pay for that? Ordinary Barbadians, we would have to pay for that in our electricity bills! So I don’t know what cost benefit analysis was done with this Cahill plant at all.”

His comments came as he revealed that the proposal for the investor for the new waste-to-energy plant is “way less” than 66 cents per kilowatt-hour.