As Barbados moves towards devising an energy policy for the medium and long term, there are two critical issues that need to be addressed in an equitable and commonsense way.
The first relates to who will benefit from the allocation of a finite capacity via Barbados Light & Power Co. Ltd (BL&P). Will there be fairness and equity or will there be major winners and major losers? In short, how will this policy be devised and implemented in a way that serves the wider national interest and not just a few?
Will companies investing in photovoltaic-related services be winners or losers? Will key sectors of the economy, including hotels and Government, maximize benefits from the policy, and how it is regulated?
The second issue is that BL&P will have a finite capacity beyond which there may be genuine concern about its ability to guarantee uninterrupted service and protect its generating plant. How will Barbados respond to the need to go beyond the role of BL&P?
Recent forums have attempted to encourage a level of informed discussion on an energy policy for Barbados. Some discussion has been generated on the need for Government to urgently pass legislation on its energy policy.
But a word of caution – legislation is an output of policy and regulation, not the driver of either. A missing link therefore might be the extent to which regulation will play a role in taking Barbados into a period where renewable energy options will be adopted in an equitable way that serves the interest of all stakeholders: ordinary citizens, business interests such as Ralph “Bizzy” Williams, and key national sectors including the hotel sector and Government.
In a recent presentation during the annual conference of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Barbados, Williams urged Government to pass promised legislation on renewable energy.
But while legislation is an important element of implementing anything, it must be governed by regulatory policy. And from my understanding of where we are, that regulatory framework does not exist. We therefore have to be careful that legislation retarding the interests of all stakeholders is not rushed and adopted.
Two other recent forums helped to raise interest in the discussion, a town hall meeting of the Fair Trading Commission, and a panel discussion on Greening The Economy organized by the Barbados Economics Society (BES).
The first gathering was, in my respectful view, limited – both in terms of attendance and also in terms of substance generated. The latter meeting, like the first, piqued my interest in several areas but served more to provide a sponsoring firm with the platform to discuss some key issues and raise its marketing profile.
The FTC’s town hall meeting was designed to get feedback from the public on a Fuel Clause Adjustment (FCA) consultation paper. This opportunity for the public to respond ended on November 18.
The audience was pressed to answer a number of questions, including: should the FCA be calculated on the basis of actual data or projections?
A few people attempted to answer this question as if they were in a multiple choice exam where sometimes logic would be applied. So they said yes, use actual data.
Now the challenge I have with people responding to such questions is that even if they had read the consultation paper, that paper is inadequately supplied with critical information to assist with an informed answer. Secondly, none of the data which I have been looking at was available nor in the context to assist the audience in the detail required.
To answer yes requires that we have done some assessment of whether the existing FAC has been fair to consumers and business or not. Then there were terms of a technical nature in the document that are not explained and would require a separate forum to discuss both the meaning as well as the context, terms such as ”smoothing” and “out of merit generation”.
I have no doubt that the Fair Trading Commission means well. The Town Hall approach is to be lauded. But the process to obtain informed opinion is inadequate and does require a revisit that prepares the interested party with more substantial information.
At the regulatory and policy levels we need to bring the perspectives of people who are studying the issues to the table to arrive at something near the best that Barbados needs. Politicians have the final say on policy and regulation, but should take instruction from the technical and regulatory specialists and adopt their wise counsel. We need a serious discussion on energy policy.
• Hallam Hope is a student of regulatory policy.
