A STRATEGIC ECONOMIC PRIORITY.
That’s how Liz Thompson, an assistant secretary-general of the United Nations, has described the concept of a “green economy”, which has become the latest buzz in Barbados and in international environment circles.
And as more than 50 000 people from around the world make final preparations to travel to next month’s global environmental conference, Rio + 20, the current troubled financial times – the worst economic depression in half a century – would place increasing emphasis on the move towards the green economy.
Just last month Prime Minister Freundel Stuart told an audience in Washington that his administration was committed to the pursuit of such a policy.
Thompson, an executive coordinator of the Brazil conference, told the BUSINESS AUTHORITY in New York that the linchpin of a green economy was a comprehensive switch to alternative energy sources in the various areas of Barbados’ economy.
“We have an abundance of renewable energy sources in Barbados and the rest of the Caribbean and we should, for our energy and economic security, be relying on these sources rather than incurring billions of [US] dollars in debt” on fossil fuels, she said.
“In places like Barbados and Grenada we have indigenous solar water heating industries which present opportunities to investors in local businesses. They would be able to scale up and help to take those industries global.”
As she sees it, the march towards a green economy and the expansion of the use of solar energy can pave the way for the emergence of solar-powered street lighting in Barbados, for instance, a move that would reduce the use of expensive fossil fuels.
“It would also help us to move towards the use of more hybrid vehicles, some that use the abundance of natural gas in the Caribbean,” she argued.
“In essence, it would mean delinking our development from fossil fuels and placing it more on a platform of renewable energy sources. I am happy that the Prime Minister has stated his commitment to the green economy because that’s the way the country must go.”
Thompson, a former minister of energy, traced the approach to a green economy to a 2007 national energy policy which she presented to Parliament in Bridgetown and argued that private sector involvement was crucial to any successful transition from the heavy reliance on fossil fuels to other energy sources.
“The switch would reduce operating costs of private enterprises and generate greater profit margins,” she said. “Yes, it would mean investment in retrofitting but the returns would more than compensate for that initial investment over the long haul.”
Already, she added, the Central Bank had estimated that the indigenous solar water heating sector pioneered by James Husbands had saved Barbados an estimated $500 million in fuel imports and expenditure over several decades.
“The International Energy Agency has identified Barbados as having the seventh highest per capita penetration of solar water heating in the world.
That’s a tremendous accolade for a country like ours,” she added.
As a matter of fact, the use of wind energy in Barbados; development of geo-thermal energy in Dominica and Grenada; and the continued expansion of oil and natural gas sectors in Trinidad and Tobago were but three of the avenues open to Caribbean countries, she said.
“Not every country in the Caribbean would turn to the same source. One may use ocean thermal energy conversion, another focus on water, a third may use wind and yet another may utilize solar plus something else.
“The considerations would involve renewable energy resource wealth. Then there would be the political aspects of the decisions.”
She sees the need for energy policy decisions and supporting enabling legislation to accelerate the move towards a green economy, not simply in Barbados but in other countries.
“Transport is always a major component of your energy costs. We could transform our energy picture by insisting that eventually our commercial transport fleets could be driven by natural gas or other alternative fuels,” she said.
“That would save a tremendous amount of money and have a beneficial climate change impact by reducing our energy footprint significantly.”
The fleet of the Barbados Transport Board would be a good place to begin. She said the 2007 Budget contained funds for a pilot project for alternatively fuelled vehicles to see how they would work and the routes and vehicles that would provide the best results.
“It was also included in the 2008 Budget presented by the late Prime Minister David Thompson but it has never happened,” said the UN official.
But the trained energy arbitrator, who is also an attorney-at-law, said the current international financial environment fuelled by high energy costs provides an incentive for greater use of alternative energy that would assist manufacturing, save money on the operations of mass transportation systems and boost energy generation in ways that would stir the economy.
