Renewable energy the answer: BL&P CEO

Switching to renewable sources of energy is the best way that this country can avoid the pitfalls that come with the recent rise in oil prices.

This is according to the CEO of the Barbados Light and Power (BL&P) Company Ltd, Roger Blackman who spoke to the media after the National Workshop hosted by the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Council on ‘Integrating Sustainable Development’ for TVET yesterday at their headquarters.

He stated that they have a fuel clause in place which was implemented to deal with those times when the price of oil and by extension, the price of electricity were to go up so that the utility would not have to go to the regulator every time the price of oil changed.

“Basically what happens is that the fuel charge – fuel clause investment that we have in place – was put in place because fuel prices which is the major input into the production of electricity is an import and it is very volatile – it moves up and down depending on oil prices – and in order to be able to operate as a business, those price changes and swings are recovered through the fuel clause and that was put in place many years ago in order to avoid utility having to go to the regulator regularly whenever the price of oil changes.”

Blackman said that they had also looked into financial hedges, which they applied for in the past and were not successful. However, they have revisited those reasons why they were not successful and tried to find solutions to them so that when they get an opportunity again, they can reapply for it. However, the best solution and the long term answer is to take advantage of renewable sources.

“So there are ways to manage that however, and some of the ways in the short term would be like fuel hedging – financial hedges – which is something that we have applied for in the past and we were unsuccessful the last time, there were many reasons that we were unsuccessful, we need to revisit those and try to address them so that we can look at it again when the window of opportunity arises; look at putting hedges in place that would smooth things out to avoid spikes. But the long term solution
really is to wean ourselves off of oil in the long term and to switch to renewables.” (PJT)