Dominica says it plans to establish a small geothermal plant despite a few “hiccups’’ with investors. Credit: Charles Jong

By Desmond Brown
ROSEAU, Dominica, Sep 6 2017 (IPS)

The tiny Caribbean island of Dominica has moved one step closer to its dream of constructing a geothermal plant, a project that is expected to reduce the country’s dependence on fossil fuels.

The Dominica government is contributing 40.5 million dollars towards the project and has been seeking to raise the additional funds from various sources.The road towards geothermal has been a long and arduous, not only for Dominica but also its Caribbean neighbours.

“In addition to government’s contribution we have secured all the funds required to construct the plant from our development partners,” Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said, noting that the funding will include EC$30 million from Britain, EC$5.4 million from New Zealand and also EC$5.4 million from SIDS DOCK.

SIDS DOCK is an initiative among member countries of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) to provide the Small Island Developing States with a collective institutional mechanism to assist them transform their national energy sectors into a catalyst for sustainable economic development and help generate financial resources to address adaptation to climate change.

It is called SIDS DOCK because it is designed as a “DOCKing station,” to connect the energy sector in SIDS with the global market for finance, sustainable energy technologies and with the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) carbon markets, and able to trade the avoided carbon emissions in those markets. Estimates place the potential value of the US and EU markets between 100 to 400 billion dollars annually.

Skerrit noted that the environmental and social impact assessment for the geothermal project is ongoing in the Roseau valley.

“Every effort will be made to ensure that adverse impacts on the communities and the environment will be mitigated,” he said, adding that land owners in the area can also expect to be compensated for use of their property and support will be provided to residents who occupy lands to ensure that they are not left worst off.

The designs for the plant are progressing and should be completed by the third quarter of 2017.

“Once the plant has been commissioned, the DGDC will sell power to DOMLEC (Dominica Electricity Company) to be distributed throughout the country.

“So far, I have been advised, that based on the regulations of the Independent Regulatory Commission (IRC) DOMLEC must pass on the lower tariff to the consumer. That is to say DOMLEC is not allowed to add to the cost at which the power will be sold. This will ensure that the lower cost of electricity from geothermal will pass through to the consumers of our country,” Skerrit said, adding that negotiations are ongoing with DOMLEC to finalize the terms of the power purchase agreement.

Dominica has also applied for grant funding from the United Arab Emirates Caribbean Renewable Energy Fund and is expecting between EC$8.1 million and EC$13.5 million to fund a battery storage system to be used on the national electricity grid.

Skerrit said funding for this project will also be obtained from the World Bank in the form of a loan of EC$16.2 million at a highly concessionary rate of 0.75 per cent with a 10-year grace period and 44-year repayment plan.

“We have invested millions thus far,” Skerrit said, adding he is confident citizens “all look forward to the significant reduction in the cost of energy that will follow”.

He said the development of the plant “will be a positive impact on businesses and this should also stimulate investments by others establishing new businesses”.

The road towards geothermal has been a long and arduous, not only for Dominica but also Caribbean neighbours St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Last December, Energy Minister Ian Douglas said Dominica was moving closer to harnessing geothermal energy.

He said the Dominica Geothermal Company had been registered, and planning of the power plant is progressing.

“We are moving ever closer to the vision of realizing power from our geothermal resources. The Dominica Geothermal Company has been duly registered, and plans for the construction of the power plant are progressing satisfactorily,” he stated.

This follows a decision made by the government to run the geothermal project as a company solely owned by the government and people of Dominica.

Earlier this year, the St. Lucia-based Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Commission said financing and government policy had been identified as the major challenges to the development of geothermal energy in the Eastern Caribbean.

A survey, conducted by the Energy Unit of the OECS Commission, gathered the views of 86 people involved in geothermal energy, half of whom were based in the OECS region.

The respondents of the survey were geothermal stakeholders working with or with an interest in geothermal energy in the nine-member sub-region.

According to the OECS Commission, most of the respondents (82 percent) were employees of government or utility companies pursuing geothermal energy initiatives.

With respect to non-OECS respondents, almost 50 percent were private sector geothermal experts with past experience working on geothermal projects.

“There was clear consensus amongst all survey participants that finance and government policy are the main challenges to geothermal energy development in the region. These were followed closely by competition from other energy sources, and technological issues,’ the Commission said.

It said the majority of survey participants would like to see the establishment of a regional mechanism to support geothermal development in the region.

“The geothermal stakeholders are convinced that such a mechanism would be beneficial to the industry, especially as it relates to policy, legislation, and regulations.”

The Commission noted that all countries of the Eastern Caribbean are almost totally dependent on imported fossil fuels, despite their significant potential for renewable energy such as solar, hydro, wind, and geothermal.

In recent years geothermal energy has emerged as a priority for the OECS region. Currently, seven of the ten OECS member states are working towards the development of their geothermal resources. The scientific evidence shows a strong potential for development as countries continue to assess and quantify their geothermal potential.

The Bouillante geothermal plant on the French island of Guadeloupe is the only geothermal power plant currently operating in the Caribbean. It’s been operating since 1986 and currently provides about six percent of the electricity in Guadeloupe.

The El Tatio geyser field in the northern Chilean region of Antofagasta. Geothermal energy comes from the earth’s internal heat, and the steam is delivered to a turbine, which powers a generator. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

By Marianela Jarroud
OLLAGÜE, Chile, Aug 26 2015 (IPS)

Chile, a land of volcanoes and geysers, has started building South America’s first geothermal plant, which would open a door to this kind of renewable energy in this country that depends largely on fossil fuels.

The Cerro Pabellón geothermal project is “immensely important for the Chilean state, which started geothermal exploration and drilling over 40 years ago,” but no initiative had taken concrete shape until now, Marcelo Tokman, general manager of the state oil company, ENAP, told IPS.

Located in the rural municipality of Ollagüe, 1,380 km north of Santiago, in the Andes highlands in the region of Antofagasta, Cerro Pabellón “will not only be the first geothermal plant in Chile and South America, but will also be the first in the world to be built at 4,500 metres above sea level,” Tokman added.

The Italian company Enel Green Power has a 51 percent stake in the project and ENAP owns 49 percent. The plant consists of two units of 24 MW each for a total gross installed capacity of 48 MW in the first phase, but with the advantage of being able to generate electricity around-the-clock.

That makes it equivalent, in terms of annual generating capacity, to a 200-MW solar or wind power plant.

The first stage would enter into operation in the first quarter of 2017 and a year later another 24 MW would be added. But the plant could be generating around 100 MW in the medium term, on 136 hectares of land.

Tokman said that once the plant is fully operational, it will be able to produce some 340 megatwatt-hours (MWh) a year that would go into the national power grid and would meet the consumption needs of 154,000 households in this country of 17.6 million people.

He also said it would avoid over 155,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year, by reducing fossil fuel consumption.

The Atacama desert, the most arid in the world, has a large part of Chile’s geothermal potential and is the location of the first South American plant to tap into this source of energy. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

Sixty million dollars were invested in the exploratory phase, and an estimated 320 million dollars more will go into the plant and the construction of a 73-km power line.

Geothermal energy is obtained by tapping underground reservoirs of heat, generally near volcanoes, geysers or other hotspots on the surface of the earth. If well-managed, the geothermal reservoirs can produce clean energy indefinitely. The steam generated is delivered to a turbine, which powers a generator.

The Philippines is home to three of the world’s 10 biggest geothermal plants, followed by the United States and Indonesia, with two each, and Italy, Mexico and Iceland, with one each.

Studies indicate that Chile is one of the countries with the greatest geothermal potential in Latin America.

This long, narrow country, which forms part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, stretches 4,270 km along the Andes mountains, the earth’s largest volcanic chain.

Environmentalists say geothermal energy has a relatively low impact, as long as questions of scale and location are respected.

“Geothermal is an unconventional renewable energy source to the extent that it is carried out in accordance with territorial and cultural needs. The energy source in and of itself does not guarantee social and environmental sustainability,” land surveyor Lucio Cuenca, director of the Santiago-based Latin American Observatory on Environmental Conflicts, told IPS.

Respecting these parameters, geothermal energy “is a very good alternative for this country,” he said.

In the case of the Cerro Pabellón plant, the surrounding communities form part of the Alto El Loa nature reserve, made up of the villages and communities of Caspana, Ayquina, Turi, Chiu Chiu, Cupo, Valle de Lasana, Taira and Ollagüe, which have a combined total population of just over 1,000, most of them Atacameño and Quechua indigenous people.

The Alto El Loa Indigenous Peoples Council got ENAP and ENEL to sign a series of agreements for the implementation of social development projects in the local communities in compensation for the impact of the geothermal project, and especially the power line.

For the inhabitants of Alto El Loa, scattered in remote areas in the Atacama desert, if the project is sustainable and benefits their communities, it will be a positive thing. But they say they are concerned that their way of life may not be respected.

“I would like to see more help, and if this is a good thing, then it’s welcome,” Luisa Terán, a member of the Atacameño indigenous group from the village of Caspana, told IPS. “Sometimes we feel a bit neglected and isolated.

“But it has to come with respect for our traditions, and it is our elders who are demanding that most strongly,” she added.

Others, however, reject the project as “anti-natural” and “violent” towards the local habitat.

“If you hurt the earth, she will in one way or another get back at you,” tourist guide Víctor Arque, of San Pedro de Atacama, a highlands village 290 km from Ollagüe, told IPS. “It can’t be possible to drill kilometres below ground without something happening.”

A photo taken at dawn in the middle of the steam from the El Tatio geysers in northern Chile, where this clean, unlimited source of energy will begin to be harnessed with the construction of the Cerro Pabellón geothermal plant in the rural municipality of Ollagüe. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

The El Tatio precedent

Chile was a pioneer in research on geothermal potential. The first exploration was carried out in 1907 in El Tatio, a geyser field located some 200 km from Cerro Pabellón and 4,300 metres above sea level. This country was the third to explore geothermal energy, after the United States and Russia.

Two wells were drilled in that area in 1931, and in the late 1960s the government carried out more systematic exploration, which was later abandoned.

In 2008, the Geotérmica del Norte company, which belonged to the Italian consortium ENEL, began exploration in Quebrada del Zoquete, a few km from El Tatio, using the equipment already installed in the geyser field.

In September 2009, a 60-metre high column of steam shot up from one of the wells where the company was extracting and reinjecting geothermal fluids. The anomaly, caused by a failed valve, lasted more than three weeks and led to the government’s cancellation of the permit for further operations.

Tokman, energy minister at the time, remembered the incident. “Fortunately all of the safeguards had been taken to demand different instruments of measurement for the project, to ensure that the reservoir was deeper and distinct from the reservoir in the El Tatio geyser field,” he said.

Cuenca said the mistake was “having restarted a geothermal programme in Chile doing everything that shouldn’t be done: that is, interfering in a place where there are indigenous communities, an area with a high tourist and economic value, simply to take advantage of the infrastructure that was already installed there.”

Experts warn that geothermal power is not a panacea for Chile’s energy deficit, because if there is one thing this country has learned, it is that a diversified energy mix is essential.

But if Chile’s potential is confirmed, Cerro Pabellón could open the door to geothermal development not only in this country but in South America.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

St Kitts and Nevis has launched a 1-megawatt solar farm at the country’s Robert L Bradshaw International Airport. A second solar project is also nearing completion. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
FORT-DE-FRANCE, Martinique, Jul 21 2015 (IPS)

A leading geothermal expert warns that the small island states in the Caribbean face “a ticking time bomb” due to the effects of global warming and suggests a shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energy is the only way to defuse it.

President of the Ocean Geothermal Energy Foundation Jim Shnell says to solve the problems of global warming and climate change, the world needs a new energy source to replace coal, oil and other carbon-based fuels.  OGEF’s mission is to fund the R&D needed to tap into the earth’s vast geothermal energy resources."You need to have a balance of your resources but it is quite possible to have that balance and still make it 100 percent renewable and do without fossil fuels altogether." -- Jim Shnell

“With global warming comes the melting of the icecaps in Greenland and Antarctica and the projection is that at the rate we are going, they will both melt by the end of this century,” Shnell told IPS, adding “if that happens the water levels in the ocean will rise by approximately 200 feet and there are some islands that will disappear altogether.

“So you’ve got a ticking bomb there and we’ve got to defuse that bomb and if I were to rate the issues for the Caribbean countries, I would put a heavyweight on that one.”

It has taken just eight inches of water for Jamaica to be affected by rising sea levels, with one of a set of cays called Pedro Cays disappearing in recent years.

Scientists have warned that as the seas continue to swell, they will swallow entire island nations from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities.

In the Caribbean, scientists have also pointed to the likelihood of Barbuda disappearing in 40 years.

Shnell said countries could “essentially eliminate” the threat by turning to renewable energy, thereby decreasing the amount of fossil fuels or carbon-based fuels they burn.

“The primary driver of climate change is greenhouse gasses and one of the principal ones in terms of volume is carbon dioxide,” he said.

“For a long time a lot of electricity, 40 per cent of the electricity produced in many countries, would come from coal because it was a very inexpensive, plentiful form of carbon to burn.

“But now countries have seen that they need to move away from that and in fact the G7 just earlier this month got together and in their meeting, the leaders declared that they were going to be 100 percent renewable, that is completely stop burning carbon, coals and other forms of fossil fuels by the end of this century. The only problem is that for global warming purposes that’s probably too late,” Shnell added.

Shnell was among some of the world’s leading renewable energy experts who met here late last month to consider options for renewable energy development in the Caribbean.

The Martinique Conference on Island Energy Transitions was organised by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and the French Government, which will host the United Nations International Climate Change Conference, COP 21, at the Le Bourget site in Paris from Nov. 30 Dec. 11 2015.

Senior Energy Specialist at the World Bank Migara Jaywardena said the conference was useful and timely in bringing all the practitioners from different technical people, financial people and government together.

“There’s a lot of climate funds that are being deployed to support and promote clean energy…and we talked about the challenges that small islands, highly indebted countries have with mobilising some of this capital and making that connection to clean energy,” Jaywardena told IPS.

“They want to do it but there isn’t enough funds and remember there’s a lot of other competing development interests, not just energy but non-energy interests as well. Since this conference leads to the COP in Paris, I think being a part of that climate dialogue is important because it creates an opportunity to begin to access some of those funds.”

“As an example, for Dominica we have an allocation of 10 million dollars from the clean technology fund to support the geothermal and that’s a perfect example of where climate funds could be mobilised to support clean energy in the islands,” Jaywardena added.

Shnell said Caribbean economies are severely affected by the cost of fuel but that should be an incentive to redouble their efforts to get away from importing oil.

“The oil that you import and burn turns right around and contributes to global warming and the potential flooding of the islands, whereas you have some great potential resources there in terms of solar and wind and certainly geothermal,” he said.

“What we’re advocating is the mixture of those resources. We feel it would be a mistake to try to select one and make that your 100 percent source of power or energy but it’s the mix, because of different characteristics of each of them and different timing of availability and so forth, they work much better together.”

He noted that wind and solar are intermittent while utility companies have to provide power all the time.

“So you need something like geothermal or hydropower that works all the time and provides enough energy to keep the grid running even when there is no solar energy. So you need to have a balance of your resources but it is quite possible to have that balance and still make it 100 percent renewable and do without fossil fuels altogether,” Shnell said.

A legislator in St. Kitts and Nevis said the twin island federation has gone past fossil fuel generation and is now adopting solar energy with one plant on St. Kitts generating just below 1 megawatt of electricity and another being developed which would produce 5 megawatts.

“In terms of solar we’ll be near production of 1.5 megawatts of renewable energy. As a government we are going full speed ahead in relation to ensuring that there’s renewable energy, of course, where the objective is to reduce electricity costs in St. Kitts and Nevis,” Energy Minister Ian Liburd told IPS.

In late 2013 legislators in Nevis selected Nevis Renewable Energy International (NREI) to develop a geothermal energy project, which they said would eventually eliminate the need for existing diesel-fired electrical generation by replacing it with renewable energy.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Seven percent of Costa Rica’s electricity comes from wind power, thanks to wind farms such as the ones operating in the mountains of La Paz and Casamata, 50 km from San José. But the automotive industry remains a hurdle to the country’s dream of achieving a totally clean energy mix. Credit: Diego Arguedas Ortiz/IPS

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
SAN JOSE, May 5 2015 (IPS)

Costa Rica has almost reached its goal of an energy mix based solely on renewable sources, harnessing solar, wind and geothermal power, as well as the energy of the country’s rivers.

In April, the state electricity company, ICE, announced that in 2015, 97 percent of the country’s energy supply would come from clean sources.

“The country as such, along with its energy and environmental policies, has decided that it wants its energy development to be based on renewable sources,” Javier Orozco, the head of ICE’s System Expansion Process, told Tierramérica.

But this Central American country of 4.5 million people still depends partially on fossil fuels. The official said “we use thermal energy generation as a complement because renewables depend on the climate and you can’t guarantee that there will always be wind or water.”

The country’s energy supply is based almost totally on clean sources. In March ICE announced that in the first 75 days of the year, not a single litre of oil nor kilo of coal were burnt to generate electricity in the country.

“In our country, we build thermal plants to keep them turned off. Our aim is to have thermal plants that are turned off most of the time,” Orozco said.

That objective is not always met, principally because hydroelectric power varies with seasonal stream flows. The year 2014 was dry and the country’s fossil fuel use hit a record level, generating 10.3 percent of the total electricity supply.

Since the mid-20th century, Costa Rica’s energy mix has been largely based on hydroelectricity. But the country has gradually reduced its dependence on that energy source, and in 2014 hydropower accounted for only 63 percent of the total demand of 2,800 MW, while geothermal energy supplied 15 percent and wind power seven percent.

Last year’s large petroleum bill was caused by the El Niño/Southern Oscillation, a cyclical climate phenomenon that affects weather patterns around the world, which hit Central America hard and triggered one of the worst droughts in over half a century.

Projections of the future impact of climate change play a double role: while the world has to seek cleaner sources of energy to curb global warming, Costa Rica must diversify its energy mix because of the changes in hydrological patterns.

The country is thus exploring the limits of renewable energies and the possibility of generating 100 percent clean energy is on the table, as part of a strategy based especially on geothermal power.

This source of energy is hidden under the volcanoes of northwest Costa Rica. Local scientists and engineers are perfecting the technique of using the earth’s heat to generate electricity.

“We are planning the construction of the new geothermal plant, Pailas II, and we are at the stage of feasibility studies for a new field. Geothermal power is important because it isn’t subject to climate change, but is constant,” Orozco explained.
The plant will have 50 MW of installed capacity and it will join the ones already in operation: Pailas (35 MW), and Miralles (165 MW). That means that only 23 percent of the country’s geothermal potential of 865 MW is being used, according to ICE figures.

But the problem with respect to developing this source of energy is that the rest of the potential lies in national parks, where exploiting it is banned by law.

That raises the question of what definition of green energy the country will accept.

Experts like former minister of environment and energy René Castro (2011-2014) see the development of geothermal energy as viable.

“It is possible,” Castro told Tierramérica. “Two changes are needed: ICE would need to expand geothermal energy production, and the extraction of this source of energy in national parks would need to be authorised, while paying royalties to the parks and replacing the land used, twice over: if 50 hectares are used (in a park), the equivalent of 100 percent of its ecological value would be replaced.”

The other measure proposed by Castro is “to authorise the private sector to generate electricity with biomass from pineapple or banana plant waste, or sawdust,” and later sell it to ICE, which administers the energy supply and is the biggest producer of electricity.

Private operators represent 14.5 percent of total energy generation and one-fourth of installed capacity. But they face legal restrictions when it comes to expanding their share.

The investment needed would be similar to what is projected by ICE, which is close to one percent of GDP, the former minister said. “What would change is that instead of one single investor, ICE, it would be the dominant one, accompanied by around 30 other companies and cooperatives,” he said.

The country is in urgent need of holding this debate.

In July 2014, the legislature approved a loan from the European Investment Bank and the Japan International Cooperation Agency to build the Pailas II geothermal project.

ICE is building plants that will expand its current installed capacity of 2,800 MW by an additional 800 MW.

At the same time, the government is holding a national dialogue on electrical energy, to discuss these issues, and a national dialogue on transportation and fuels, which will address the hurdle to Costa Rica’s dream of green energy: the fuel used in transportation.

Transport, the weakest link

“The transportation sector is the biggest energy consumer at a national level and is responsible for 67 percent of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions,” said the current minister of environment and energy, Édgar Gutiérrez, at the start of the national dialogue talks.

That is why “addressing the challenges in this sector is a priority” for the government, he said.

No matter how clean Costa Rica’s energy mix becomes, the country will still produce emissions and will still have a “dirty” development model because of land transport.

One possible solution could come from Costa Rican-born scientist and former astronaut Franklin Chang, who is working on a hydrogen-based renewable energy system.

“The problem doesn’t lie in electricity but in transportation,” he told Tierramérica. “That’s where we have to distance ourselves from the use of petroleum, introduce our own fuel in our own country with hydrogen-based technologies.”

From his laboratory in Guancaste, in western Costa Rica on the Pacific Ocean, Chang has partnered with Costa Rica’s state oil refinery, RECOPE, to create a pilot plan with several hydrogen-fueled vehicles, and has reached the test stage. But a technicality has stalled the 2.3 million dollar project.

In October, his company, Ad Astra, announced that it was ready to launch the final phase.

“It was the final flourish – we were going to install and create a small ecosystem of hydrogen vehicles,” said Chang. But RECOPE was unable to overcome the legal obstacle to operate using that energy source. “In March I announced that I was totally fed up.”

The legislature is currently studying a solution to enable RECOPE to invest in clean energy sources, but until then the project will be stalled.

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Workers use electricity and firewood to prepare cassava bread in Canaries, St. Lucia. The country’s government says renewable energy can help with value-added in the agricultural sector. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kenton X. Chance
CASTRIES, Feb 25 2015 (IPS)

At Plas Kassav, a roadside outlet in Canaries, a rural community in western St. Lucia, a busload of visitors from other Caribbean countries, along with tourists from North America and Europe, sample the 12 flavours of freshly baked cassava bread on sale.

In the back of the shop, employees busily sift the grated cassava and prepare it for baking. Next to them, an electric motor powers a device that turns grated cassava as it bakes into farine — a cereal made from cassava tubers — in a wood-fired cauldron.Caribbean nations, with their fossil fuel-dependant economies, “don't want to be caught in a situation where today the price of oil is less than 50 dollars a barrel and tomorrow, if the Saudis and the other players decide, that the price of oil could go up to 120 dollars a barrel.” -- Minister James Fletcher

This is one of the ways in which this eastern Caribbean nation of 180,000 people is marrying its tourism and agriculture sectors.

Tourism makes the largest contribution to St. Lucia’s 1.3-billion-dollar economy. And with oil prices expected to continue falling for some time, this 617-square-kilometre island is hoping for significant economic growth on the heels of the slim years since the global financial crisis struck in 2008.

The government says that the move toward renewable energy will see businesses and households paying less for energy and will also strengthen the nation’s argument at the international climate change negotiations.

A renewable energy expert with the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) tells IPS that falling oil prices present an excellent opportunity for small island developing states such as St. Lucia and its 14 other Caribbean Community (CARICOM) allies to accelerate their renewable energy programme.

“I think you can look at it as a windfall that buys you time for the transition,” Dolf Gielen says.

He tells IPS that falling oil prices will slow down but will not end the push towards clean energy.

“Oil prices will somewhat slow the acceleration but you will see a continued transition towards renewables,” he says. “Now you have a little more time to plan it and to make sure that it functions well.”

James Fletcher, St. Lucia’s Minister of Public Service, Sustainable Development, Energy, Science and Technology, tells IPS that he agrees that the region needs to accelerate its transition toward renewable energy, but is not certain whether lower fuel prices is really reason to exhale.

“I’m not sure about the breathing space. I think what it does, however, show is that this fuel price game is not one we want to be playing,” Fletcher tells IPS.

He notes that while the price of oil has fallen to 50 dollars a barrel — less than half of what it was half year ago — the decrease did not result from any advances in technology.

“The price of oil right now is being determined by the geopolitics of oil,” he says, noting that Saudi Arabia has increased its production in an effort to make production of shale oil in the United States and Canada less attractive.

Fletcher says that Caribbean nations, with their fossil fuel-dependant economies, “don’t want to be caught in a situation where today the price of oil is less than 50 dollars a barrel and tomorrow, if the Saudis and the other players decide, that the price of oil could go up to 120 dollars a barrel.”

Cruise in Castries Harbour, St. Lucia. The island is hoping to use renewable energy to fuel a greater part of its tourism sector. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

If the Caribbean is really serious about sustainable development and wants its economies to develop with some level of certainty, “we can’t be at the mercy of a widely fluctuating oil market,” Fletcher stresses.

“So, for me, what is happening in the oil market is reason why, as much as possible, we should get either out of it or insulate ourselves from it – and that’s why renewable energy makes so much sense to us.”

As opposed to dependence on oil, Fletcher says, if Caribbean countries are depending on renewable energy then there is “much more certainty” of what the price of energy will be.

“… With prices fluctuating so much not because of any huge difference in technology and any difference in supply in the Middle East or any glut in the supply market, I think that’s why we should be getting pursuing our renewable energies programme with more haste and more energy,” Fletcher tells IPS.

In St. Lucia, consumers pay 38 cents for one kilowatt-hour of electricity. The government hopes that its investments in renewable energy could see that price reduced to 30 cents.

St. Lucia is home to Sulphur Sprints, the “world’s only drive in volcano” — a smoking caldera located near Soufrière on the southwestern side of the island, where the natural heat boils the water and geysers shoot into the air at high tide and full moon.

St. Lucia hopes to generate up to 30 megawatts of electricity in Soufriere, home to Sulphur Springs, the “world’s only drive-in volcano”. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

It stands to reason that geothermal energy will be the nation’s focus as it pivots to renewable energy.

Fletcher tells IPS wind and solar PV are intermittent sources of energy “and we really can’t complete a transition away from fossil fuel based on intermittent sources, unless we invest heavily in storage, which we really don’t have the capacity to do right now.”

St. Lucia has received financial and technical support from the government of New Zealand, SIDS-DOCK, and the Global Environmental Facility to conduct the initial stage of exploration, which will start soon, Fletcher says.

LUCILEC, the state-owned power company in St. Lucia, will purchase the electricity from the power plant developer, ORMAK of Isreal, and resell it to consumers.

Fletcher tells IPS that the government is pleased with the pace of the negotiations but notes that developing geothermal potential takes time.

“But at least it puts us on track to developing what we believe is as much as 30 megawatts of geothermal energy in Soufriere,” he says.

And while geothermal energy has been identified as the booster that St. Lucia’s tourism industry has been longing for, exploiting that same renewable energy potential could deal a devastating blow to the nation’s tourism product.

“There is one little wrinkle in that, because the drive-in volcano is also located within the Piton Management Area, and the Piton Management Area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and it is located in one of the policy areas where we are restricted in the level of infrastructural development that can take place,” Fletcher explains.

“So what we will be doing is looking at drill sites outside of the immediate vicinity of the drive-in volcano, but we are quite confident that we will have quite productive wells outside of that immediate area.”

St. Lucia is also exploring the development of a 12-megawatt wind farm on the island’s east cost and has been having discussion with an entity in the United States in this regard.

The third element of the renewable energy push is solar PV, the first stage of which will be done by LUCILEC, which has invited responses to proposal for a 1.2-megawatt facility in the south of St. Lucia, the intention being that it will be scaled up to 3 megawatts in the near future.

In this regard, the government is working with the Carbon War Room and the Clinton Initiative, which have been supporting the renewable energy programme.

Fletcher tells IPS that the move toward renewable energy, coupled with energy saving initiatives — such reducing from 4.0 million dollars to 2.6 million annually the amount spent on street lighting by switching to LED bulbs — will have a “tremendous” impact on St. Lucia.

The government is moving to make its own buildings more energy efficient, and will take to Parliament legislation to provide home and land tax, income tax rebate for people who are retrofitting their homes with energy efficient devices or installing grid-tie solar PV.

“What that does is many-fold. First of all, it causes our economic sector to be much more competitive,” Fletcher says, adding that a large portion of spending in the tourism sector is on energy.

“When you now superimpose on that the work we are doing with renewables, that, hopefully, will cause a reduction in the price of electricity from what it is right now, which 38 US cents per hour, to something approaching 30 cents. Then the expenditure by our hotels, by our manufacturing sector, the expenditure by people who are interested in value-added in agriculture, that expenditure goes down and it makes those sectors more competitive,” Fletcher tells IPS.

“On the household side, any money that is not being spent on energy is money that can be spent on something else. And so our focus is not just on the commercial establishments but also to get our residential consumers to benefit from the reduction in the cost of electricity, but also by putting in energy saving measures in their homes and giving them concessions to do that, that they will realise significant savings where their energy expenditure is concerned.”

Fletcher is one of St. Lucia’s and CARICOM’s negotiator at the global climate change talks, where the nations of the worlds are slated to sign a binding deal for reducing global warming in Paris later this year.

He tells IPS that at the international climate change negotiations, St. Lucia has been saying to developed countries that they have to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases to keep global warming to two degrees above pre-industrial levels, as proposed by experts.

“Now, it strengthens our case. It strengthens our moral argument if we can say that a country like St. Lucia that contributes … something like 0.00078 per cent of all green house gases, we recognise the importance of this being a global effort and we are still committing to reducing our carbon footprint by 30, 40, 50 per cent.

“Then we believe that the big emitters, like the United States, like the European countries, like China, like Russia, that they also should be doing more to reduce their greenhouse emissions. So, I think it strengthens our hand in the international negotiations where climate change is concerned,” Fletcher tells IPS.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at Kentonxtchance@gmail.com

Follow him on Twitter @KentonXChance

St. Vincent and the Grenadines has installed 750 kilowatt hours of photovoltaic panels, which it says reduced its carbon emissions by 800 tonnes annually. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kenton X. Chance
KINGSTOWN, Jan 12 2015 (IPS)

For decades, the fertile slopes of La Soufriere volcano, which occupies the northern third of this 344-kilometre-square island, has produced illegally grown marijuana that fuels the local underground economy, and the trade in that illicit drug across the eastern Caribbean.

But now the 1,234-metre-high mountain, which last erupted in 1979, is now being explored for something very different — its geothermal energy potential."Even if you have a lot of solar, you are still going to need the hydro and the geothermal and the diesel to carry the base." -- Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves

The Ralph Gonsalves government believes that geothermal energy will be a “game changer” for the local economy.

In this country, where tourism is the mainstay, the cost of electricity ranges from 40 to 50 cents per kilowatt-hour — several times what consumers pay in the United States.

Householders and manufacturers are hoping that the geothermal energy exploration, which has been underway for more than a year, will in fact produce the 10 to 15 megawatts of electricity that the country desperately needs to relieve its dependence on high-cost fossil fuels and give new life to the manufacturing and agro-processing sectors.

The geothermal energy exploration is a partnership between the Unity Labour Party government, the Icelandic Firm Reykjavik Geothermal Ltd., and Emera Inc., an international energy company with roots in Nova Scotia, Canada that also owns power stations in the Caribbean.

One year after the geothermal project was launched, Prime Minister Gonsalves, who will run for a fourth consecutive five-year term in elections this year, told Parliament in December that the geothermal power plant is on track for a 2017-2018 completion.

By June 2015, a technical report will be completed and well and plant site selection will be done, Gonsalves, who also holds the energy portfolio, told lawmakers.

“We are still on target. I have been advised by the Energy Unit. … Barring some extraordinary challenge which may arise, we should be having a production of 10 megawatts by the end of 2017,” Gonsalves told lawmakers.

The slopes of St. Vincent’s La Soufriere volcano, long the home of illegally grown marijuana, are being explored for geothermal potential. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

The “very low interest monies” that the prime minister says his government will receive shortly may have been a reference to his government’s application for a 15-million-dollar loan through the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

The successful applicants will be announced at the Fifth Session of the IRENA Assembly, slated for Jan. 17-18 in Abu Dhabi, which Gonsalves will attend.

Putting the loan application of St. Vincent and the Grenadines into context, Gonsalves told IPS, “There are about 80 applications from which they are choosing eight, and the total sum would be 60 million [dollars] overall … which they will lend in this particular year.”

Notwithstanding falling oil prices recently, Gonsalves is still convinced that renewable energy is the way to go for St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

“In days gone by, when diesel was 15 dollars or less per barrel, there was no real urgency to address the other forms of energy,” he tells IPS.

One-quarter of the 20 megawatts of electricity generated during peak demand in this multi-island nation comes from the country’s three hydropower plants. The remaining 15 megawatts is generated by diesel, 70 million dollars worth of which was imported in 2013 for electricity generation.

“We want to make the hydro plants more efficient … and we want to do solar, and we are doing solar, and we want to do geothermal,” Gonsalves tells IPS, adding that geothermal energy can carry a base load of 98 per cent of the country’s energy needs, whereas solar could possibly generate 20 per cent — or higher with improved technology.

“So, even if you have a lot of solar, you are still going to need the hydro and the geothermal and the diesel to carry the base,” he tells IPS, adding that the country has a good geothermal source.

Among those who are hoping that the geothermal power plant becomes a reality sooner than later is 52-year-old furniture manufacturer Montgomery Dyer, who lives in Spring Village, a community in North Leeward, the district in northwestern St. Vincent, where the volcano is partly located.

Dyer tells IPS that he is excited about the prospects of lower electricity bills, as the cost of energy represents some 10 per cent of the production cost at his business, which employs 28 persons.

“The cost of energy in St. Vincent is very high. In any way we can reduce the cost of energy, the production cost will go down,” he tells IPS, adding that a spinoff effect would be increased competitiveness.

“We will be in a better position to compete, simple as that,” he says, even as he notes that the relatively high labour cost is also a challenge.

Dyer pays some 1,100 dollars for electricity each month, a substantial amount that would be even higher had he not taken steps to reduce electricity consumption at the factory.

“The factory is a mechanised factory, so everything [runs on] power. We try to use machines with smaller motors, and machines that rely on pneumatics. In any case, the compressor has to generate the air to power the machines where pneumatics are required,” he explained.

Outside of geothermal and hydropower, St. Vincent and the Grenadines is already taking steps to cash in on the warm tropical sunshine that bathes the nation almost year-round.

The country has some 750 kilowatt hours of photovoltaic installations, including a 10 kilowatt-hour installation on the Financial Complex — which houses the Office of the Prime Minister — that has seen the cooling cost at that building slashed by some 20 per cent.

Most of the solar installations are owned by the state electricity company, St. Vincent Electricity Services Ltd. (VINLEC), which has a legal monopoly on the commercial generation and distribution of electricity.

VINLEC has 557 kilowatt-hours of solar photovoltaic panels at its Cane Hall Power Plants, east of Kingstown, and another in Lowmans Bay, west of the capital, where another diesel power plant is also located.

The state-owned company has invested one million dollars in the panels, but the impact on the size of consumer’s electricity bill is expected to be negligible — a few cents annually.

All of the solar panels installed across the country, however, are expected to reduce by 800 tonnes annually the amount of greenhouse gases that St. Vincent and the Grenadines emits into the atmosphere.

“Now, 800 tonnes is not a significant number in global terms, but what it points to is that we are making our contribution as a small island developing state, and it is in that context of the geothermal that this visit arises,” Prime Minister Gonsalves says.

Greenhouse gases are a primary driver of climate change, which has resulted in several — sometimes unseasonal — severe weather events in St. Vincent and the Grenadines over the past few years.

These include a trough system on Christmas Eve 2013 that claimed 12 lives, and left loss and damages of 122 million dollars, or 17 per cent of the gross domestic product, according to government estimates.

Furniture manufacturer Dyer lost 445,000 dollars as a result of that trough system and had to borrow “hundreds of thousands of dollars” from commercial banks to restart his business some months later.

“It destroyed the factory,” he told IPS. “The water came through the factory — created a river in on section of the factory. It washed out everything on one side and deposited about 50 truckloads of stone, sand, and debris in the factory.

“It left the machines under about two feet of mud and silt,” he said. “It was crippling.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at Kentonxtchance@gmail.com

Hellisheiðarvirkjun is the second largest geothermal power station in the world. Iceland is a leader in geothermal energy, but other countries are starting to follow suit. Credit: Jesús Rodríguez Fernández/cc by 2.0

By Desmond Brown
LIMA, Dec 10 2014 (IPS)

Most countries joining the growing list of nations pursuing clean geothermal power have been confronted with a huge financial challenge.

But the director-general of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), Adnan Z. Amin, said efforts by his organisation to “double renewable energy” and encourage investors have been paying off, including a new effort to promote geothermal in Latin America.

Director-General of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), Adnan Z. Amin. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

“We have new financing models that are de-risking investment and lowering the cost of capital, which has historically been a barrier to renewable energy,” Amin told IPS, citing financing through green bonds as one recent innovation for renewable energy investment.

Amin said green bonds reached 14 billion dollars last year and are estimated to reach 40 billion dollars in 2014 and up to 100 billion dollars next year.

“This is changing the expectations of the traditional model of investment where it was always the expectation that developing countries would be asking for multilateral cheap financing to develop their energy sectors,” Amin said.

“That’s no longer true. What is true is that the business case for renewable energy in many of these countries is now fully established, sources of financing are coming on stream and ambitious efforts to reform the legislative and policy framework are taking place, which are opening the market for renewables.”

The proposal for an international agency dedicated to renewable energy was made in 1981 at the United Nations Conference on New and Renewable Sources of Energy in Nairobi."The business case for renewable energy in many [developing] countries is now fully established, sources of financing are coming on stream and ambitious efforts to reform the legislative and policy framework are taking place, which are opening the market for renewables.” -- IRENA chief Adnan Z. Amin

IRENA was officially founded in Bonn on Jan. 26, 2009. This was a significant milestone for world renewable energy deployment and a clear sign that the global energy paradigm was changing as a result of the growing commitments from governments.

“The reason that we are much more integrated in the climate discussion now is because energy is going to be a large part of the solution to carbon emissions in the future,” Amin said.

“We know that the current energy system accounts for 80 percent of the global carbon emissions. Just power generation by itself accounts for 40 percent of carbon emissions and we’re living in a dramatically changing world.”

IRENA has set 2030, when the planet will be home to eight billion people, as its reference point for full rollout of renewable energy.

“These eight billion people will demand about 60 percent more energy than we currently have available and at the current rate of emissions if nothing else happens, we will reach the 450 part per million tipping point [of CO2 in the atmosphere] beyond which catastrophic climate change is likely to occur in 2040,” Amin said.

“So we have this small window of opportunity to make serious efforts to control emissions that come from energy systems.”

A new programme designed to support the development of geothermal energy in the Latin American region was launched here Tuesday on the sidelines of the U.N. Climate Change Conference.

Peru’s involvement in the Geothermal Development Facility is part of its plan to achieve 60 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025.

Earlier this year, the Peruvian Government and IRENA cooperated on a renewable energy readiness assessment for the country. The assessment identifies actions needed to further expand the share of renewable energy in Peru, as well as how to better complement rural electrification and improve on-going efforts to support the development of bio fuel in the country.

The assessment determined that Peru’s vast, untapped renewable energy resources could play a key role in securing the necessary energy to fuel economic expansion while preserving the environment. It also highlights the need to prepare for renewable energy integration in transmission-grid expansion plans, particularly so that variable sources like solar and wind power can meet future electricity demand.

With the current share of renewable energy in the global electricity mix at 18 percent, IRENA hopes to see this doubled by 2030.

But an analysis of the plans on the table by all the major companies in the world to see what their current trajectory of renewable investment and decarbonisation is going to be found that they would be on “a business as usual scenario” with only a three percent increase to 21 percent by the end of 2030.

Amin has met with U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres to discuss the key role of renewables in addressing climate change.

During their talks it was noted that more than 80 percent of human-caused CO2 emissions come from burning fossil fuels for energy. Of that, 44 percent comes from coal, 36 percent from oil and 20 percent from natural gas.

“As such, energy must be our priority in bringing down global CO2 emissions,” Amin said.

Ryan Gilchrist, assistant director of business development at UGE International, a renewables firm, said Caribbean countries could turn around their struggling economies by pursuing clean energy.

“Most Caribbean countries are currently relying on imported diesel for power, which is expensive, price-volatile, and produces CO2 emissions that contribute to climate change,” Gilchrist told IPS.

“Solar energy can solve these challenges in the Caribbean, providing a cleaner and cheaper alternative. Caribbean islands are particularly threatened by climate change and rising sea levels, but at the same time, they have much to gain, as they have abundant solar and wind resources that can provide clean sources of energy.”

UGE International provides renewable energy solutions for businesses and governments in 90 countries.

Gilchrist said that the high cost for energy on islands, coupled with the falling cost of solar technology, means that renewable energy is already cost-competitive in most Caribbean countries. And he agrees that there are a number of financing mechanisms that eliminate the upfront cost of the technology, creating energy savings from day one.

Meanwhile, an Atlanta-based syndicated columnist, who has written extensively on geothermal in the Caribbean, said geothermal energy could be linked to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, as a positive factor in fighting poverty in small island states and energy security.

“Geothermal energy can be the prospective to address economic development, climate change mitigation, and stipulation of affordable energy,” Rebecca Theodore told IPS.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at destinydlb@gmail.com

Part of the area planned for extraction of CO2 in Val d’Elsa, Tuscany, Italy with a protest sign reading: EXTRACTION OF CO2 FROM THE GROUND – A NONSENSE!!! Credit: Silvia Giannelli/IPS

By Silvia Giannelli
LUCCA, Italy, Oct 30 2014 (IPS)

“If  they go ahead and dig those wells, all my work will be destroyed, all my life, everything,” says Franca Tognarelli, looking at the hills and vineyards around her house in Certaldo, Val d’Elsa, in the heart of Tuscany.

Now retired, Franca invested all her savings in restructuring her house in Certaldo, only to find that it sits on top of a deposit of CO2 that a private company – Lifenergy S.r.l. – is eager to extract and sell for industrial purposes, most likely in the production of sparkling beverages.

The irony is that the gas under Franca’s house is the same greenhouse gas held largely responsible for global warming.

While a growing awareness of the potential disastrous consequences of climate change is pushing nations to join efforts in curbing emissions of CO2, including considering highly disputed technologies such as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), the prospect of lucrative business is enough for private companies to want to extract more of it from under the ground.While a growing awareness of the potential disastrous consequences of climate change is pushing nations to join efforts in curbing emissions of CO2 … the prospect of lucrative business is enough for private companies to want to extract more of it from under the ground

According to a scientific source who wished to remain anonymous, the CO2 obtained from the area in question would offset most of the production of renewable energy in Tuscany, ultimately cancelling its Italian leadership in the production of geothermal energy.

In a preliminary phase, the CO2 project would involve drilling two test wells to a depth of between 400 and 700 metres inside a 45 hectare area that Lifenergy has already purchased. If the testing gives positive results, the company would then proceed to expand a network of wells necessary for extracting the CO2.

“They will simply have to compensate me for the part of ground they’ll be drilling,” explains Franca, “but they will be allowed to enter my property and dig all the holes they want.”

Under Italian law, a land owner’s permission is not required to enter the land for experimental excavation purposes once such experiments have been authorised by the public authorities.

Lifenergy is not the first company to have attempted to put its hands on the CO2 reserves of Val d’Elsa, but it is the first which has managed to obtain the permits to do so, after a last attempt made in the 60s ended up with the explosion of a well.

In May, a group of concerned citizens took the issue to the Tuscany Regional Administrative Court, but the court rejected their objections to the Lifenergy plan. “The law is on our side and we are open to dialogue, but we are determined to carry forward our activities,” Massimo Piazzini, managing director of Lifenergy, told local news website GoNews.

“But we need serious and responsible institutions that are willing to discuss and find solutions to give new opportunities to the territory, while respecting mankind and the environment,” he added.

Members of the Committee for the Safeguard and Defence of Val d’Elsa blame the previous town council for not having taken concrete action against the Lifenergy plan, but the newly elected mayor of Certaldo, Giacomo Cucini, said that “after receiving the company request to start testing, the former mayor simply followed the normal procedure without expressing a political opinion on the matter.”

Nevertheless, he added, “the current town council openly opposes the extraction project on our territory, because this is a territory that lives on agriculture and tourism and we want it to remain that way.”

Apart from the ‘visual impact’ that an extraction plant would have on the characteristic landscape of Certaldo, the risks of water and air pollution are a major concern among members of the Committee for the Safeguard and Defence of Val d’Elsa.

“There are plenty of farmers here who have been working all their lives, sweating blood to keep their business going, especially with the crisis,” says Caterina Concialdi, one of the committee members. “Now they have to face a private company that might leave them empty-handed, because the risks are real and nobody is telling us who’s going to pay for the damages if something happens.”

Ubaldo Malavolta is one of those farmers. His land is part of the area for which Lifenergy has requested a drilling permit after the testing phase.

“If they get the concession, they will be able to dig holes in my garden, and it’s not like a water well,” he said, adding that the company itself has declared that there will be emissions of hydrogen sulphide.”

“It’s called H2S and it’s not just about the smell, it’s poisoning and it leads to air pollution” insists Tiziano Traini, another committee member. “They are obviously supposed to keep the level of these emissions under the threshold established by law. But this will nevertheless mean a serious worsening of environmental conditions for the people who live here.”

Despite the widespread opposition shared by local citizens and the town council, the decision on the concession lies in different hands: “We have been asked to express a technical opinion,” Cucini explains, “but in no way can the municipality allow or deny the research phase of the project.”

The Tuscany Region, the authority that is responsible for the concession, is currently in the process of evaluating the environmental impact and is expected to take a decision by the beginning of December.

“The research permit is still on, but the Regional Council has stated that there will be no more concessions for underground extractions in the area, and this is quite reassuring for us,” the mayor told IPS.

Enrico Rossi, president of the Tuscany Region, explained in a public statement that the Regional Council’s stance is an act of responsibility towards the environment.

But the citizens seem to have lost their faith in the institutions and look with concern at their future: “I’m too old to go anywhere,” says Franca, “and this house will be of no value inside a mining area.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

* Anja Krieger and Elena Roda contributed to this report.

Mount Nevis sits at the centre of the volcanic island of Nevis, which has reserves of geothermal energy. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
CHARLESTOWN, Nevis, Dec 19 2013 (IPS)

The tiny island of Nevis in the northern region of the Lesser Antilles is one of the few remaining unspoiled places in the Caribbean. It is now seeking to become the greenest, joining a growing list of Caribbean countries pursuing clean geothermal power.

Last month, legislators on the volcanic island selected Nevis Renewable Energy International (NREI) to develop a geothermal energy project, which they said would eventually eliminate the need for existing diesel-fired electrical generation by replacing it with renewable energy.

In January 2014, NREI will begin to construct a geothermal power plant and injection and production wells on Crown Land leased from the Nevis Island Administration.

Acting Premier Mark Brantley said the island, with a population of 9,000, plans to remain “how the Caribbean used to be” while striving to earn the title of “greenest place on earth”.

“Nevis is committed to beginning this journey on the path to greener living,” Brantley told IPS. “The use of renewable energy will result in a reduction of emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases, thus advancing Nevis’ commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.”

The UNFCCC is an international environmental treaty negotiated in June 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), informally known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro. The treaty’s objective is to “stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

The treaty itself, which set no binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions for individual countries and contains no enforcement mechanisms, is legally non-binding. Instead, the treaty provides a framework for negotiating specific international treaties (called “protocols”) that may set binding limits on greenhouse gases.

The parties to the convention have met annually from 1995 in Conferences of the Parties (COP) to assess progress in dealing with climate change. In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was concluded, establishing legally binding obligations for developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

The 2010 Cancún agreements state that future global warming should be limited to a two-degree Celsius increase from pre-industrial levels. The twentieth COP will take place in Peru in 2014.

Utilities Minister Alexis Jeffers said Nevis currently imports 4.2 million gallons of diesel fuel annually, at a cost of 12 million dollars, a bill the island hopes to cut down significantly. Nevis consumes a maximum of 10 mw of energy annually.

“The use of geothermal energy will not only make Nevis a greener place in the future, but also make it less vulnerable to volatile oil prices, as the cost of geothermal energy is stabilised under a long-term contract,” Jeffers told IPS.

“In addition to providing lower cost, cleaner electricity for Nevis, this can potentially be expanded to include St. Kitts and other islands in the future,” Premier Brantley said. St. Kitts, which lies two miles northwest if Nevis, uses a maximum of 46 mw of energy each year.

Nevis is the smaller island of the pair, known as the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis. It is home to active hot springs and a large geothermal reservoir. Seven volcanic centres have been identified on Nevis and drilling at three sites has indicated that the geothermal reservoir is capable of producing up to 500 mw of constant baseload power year round.

Dominica recently launched its own geothermal project with the construction of a small power plant for domestic consumption and a bigger plant of up to 100 mw of electricity for export to the neighbouring French islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique.

The nearby island of St. Vincent subsequently announced the launch of a 50-million-dollar project, funded by the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the St. Vincent and the Grenadines government, Barbados Light and Power Holdings and Reykjavik Geothermal.

Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves said a contingent of Icelandic scientists had arrived on the island and would remain until the end of the year investigating the mountainous nation’s geothermal potential, estimated at 890 mw.

Barbados is also making a major shift away from fossil fuels, aiming for 29 percent of its power generation from renewable sources by 2029. An electric light and power bill was passed with bipartisan support in parliament on Dec. 17.

Opposition leader Mia Mottley said the most significant thing the government can do for residents is to reduce the cost of electricity to 29-30 cents a kilowatt-hour as soon as possible.

“We have said consistently that the most important thing the government can do is to reduce the cost of electricity next month. Not two years from now; not five years from now; not 10 years from now,” Mottley said.

“If we understand how the costs are incurred, we then understand it can only be unacceptable for the government to preside over the Barbados National Oil Company profiteering to the tune of 53 million dollars last year, and ordinary people in this country in households and business are struggling to pay electricity bills.”

Barbadians currently pay 41-42 cents per kilowatt-hours.

Prime Minister Freundel Stuart said that as part of the drive to make Barbados more sustainable, the government had entered a partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which would help develop a framework to diversify the country’s energy mix and reduce its heavy dependence on fossil fuels.

From left, Jan Hartke of the Clinton Foundation, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, Peter Williams, managing director of Light & Power Holdings Ltd., Barbados, and Gunnar Gunnarsson of Reykjavik Geothermal. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
KINGSTOWN, Nov 12 2013 (IPS)

Weary of sky-high electricity prices, St. Vincent is following in the footsteps of another, decidedly un-tropical island nearly 4,000 miles away in its quest to harness clean geothermal power.

A contingent of Icelandic scientists is here until December, investigating the mountainous nation’s geothermal potential, estimated at 890 megawatts."In North Windward where I grew up and still spend most of my time, I remember how much we yearned for electricity when most of the country was brightly lit."-- local resident Rochelle Baptiste

The source is the island’s La Soufrière volcano, which has erupted three times since 1902. There is a steaming resurgent dome in the crater and numerous hot springs in river valleys on the western side of the volcano. Of additional interest are three striking features near Wallibou Beach, in an area locally known as “Hot Waters,” and a circular feature near Morgans Wood near Trinity Falls.

“They will go into the Soufrière mountains, doing some surface exploration work. This is like hiking, just scientists walking around with some measuring devices and measuring resistivity of the earth, of the volcano, and by doing that, they will get an indication if there is a possible resource in the area,” Gunnar Orn Gunnarsson, chief operating officer of Reykjavik Geothermal, told IPS.

“We are confident that there is but first we have to do measurements to be able to confirm that,” said Gunnarsson, whose own nation relies on geothermal for about a quarter of all electricity generation.

Funding for the 50-million-dollar project is coming from the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the St. Vincent and the Grenadines government, Barbados Light & Power Holdings and Reykjavik Geothermal.

Scientists rank St. Vincent fourth on a list of countries in the Lesser Antilles with geothermal energy potential, behind Guadeloupe, St. Lucia and Dominica. Nevis, Saba, St. Kitts, Grenada, Martinique, Montserrat and Statia complete the list of the top 11 countries.

Dominica recently launched its own geothermal project with the construction of a small power plant for domestic consumption and a bigger plant of up to 100 megawatts of electricity for export to the neighbouring French Islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique.

Geothermal “is a matter of great interest, not only to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, but the Caribbean, to the neighbouring countries such as St. Lucia and Barbados,” Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves told IPS, adding that the project would be a “potentially game changing initiative.”

“The fuel cost savings to be had with geothermal, I’m told, will be in the region of 16 million to 20 million dollars. That’s a significant amount given the cost of the fuel.”

St. Vincent currently produces just over five megawatts of electricity from its three hydropower stations. The peak demand for electricity is between 20-21 megawatts. With the addition of a geothermal plant, the island is looking to produce an additional 10 megawatts to bring total production to 15 megawatts.

“When [former] President [Bill] Clinton first started this idea about reaching out to islands, he knew the price of electricity and specifically told me the electricity cost in almost every island in the Caribbean, so obviously he had put some time into looking at this and was concerned about it,” Jan Hartke, global director of the Clinton Climate Initiative Clean Energy Project, told IPS.

“How can families get along with the kinds of electricity costs that you have? How can businesses thrive? How can the islands take the kind of social and economic and environmental leadership roles that it wants and should do when you have these kinds of burdens on your electricity prices?”

Prime Minister Gonsalves also sees it as a major development opportunity. “As our energy costs come down, you can expect more hotels to come. You can expect factories which don’t want to set up here because of the high cost of electricity, and as you get more tourists there are other knock-on effects,” he said.

“More restaurants will be built and opened with a comfortable eating environment for clients, because running an air conditioning unit on an ongoing basis at 40 cents per kilowatt hour, it could eat up all of your profits,” he told IPS.

The Caribbean is one of the regions most prone to natural disasters resulting from climate change and officials are hoping that geothermal energy is the answer to their mounting climate change concerns.

Hartke said the climate issue and its effect on Caribbean countries was also of particular concern to the Clinton foundation.

“There is no set of countries that are more vulnerable than the small island developing states,” he told IPS. “Mrs. Clinton has been interested in the islands for a long time. She was at the Organisation of American States (OAS) four years ago specifically talking about the concerns and needs of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.”

Officials have already commenced public education exercises for residents of North Windward in the northeast of the island and Chateaubelair in the northwest, the two communities closest to the volcano which occupies most of the northern third of the country.

“It is very important to keep the people informed since those areas are going to be directly affected in terms of exploration and production,” Gonsalves said.

Local resident Rochelle Baptiste welcomed the government-led initiative to seek cheaper energy through geothermal exploration. Like most Vincentians, she is eagerly awaiting the end result.

“In this harsh economic climate it is important that action be taken to lessen the impact on citizens,” she told IPS.

“High energy cost is an issue that our citizens have been struggling with over the years which in some respect has been hampering social and economic development as persons are just not able to meet the cost on their monthly electricity bills compounded with other bills.

“In North Windward where I grew up and still spend most of my time, I remember how much we yearned for electricity when most of the country was brightly lit. When it came, we were elated but it came with a price which residents are still struggling to pay for. Each month you can hear the cry as neighbours complain to neighbours about the high cost of electricity, as they ponder how they are going to meet the payment,” Baptiste added.

Several drilling heads were used in St. Gallen to drill a hole of 4,450 metres in depth. Courtesy: Stadt St. Gallen/St. Galler Stadtwerke town councils.

By Ray Smith
ST. GALLEN, Switzerland, Aug 5 2013 (IPS)

An accident in a flagship project threatens the future of geothermal energy in Switzerland. The mishap that was followed by earthquakes has come as a warning that geothermal deep drilling still has a long way to go.

It occurred in a project in the eastern Swiss city St. Gallen earlier in July brings a new setback, after earlier accidents.

In 2010, 83 percent of St. Gallen’s voters approved a 160 million Swiss francs (172 million dollars) credit for a flagship geothermal project. A geothermal power station was expected to cover the electricity needs of 3,000 to 5,000 households eventually and provide heat for half of the city’s buildings. In early July, drilling was concluded up to 4,450 metres depth, and extraction tests prepared.

On Jul. 19 around noon, the engineers’ nightmare happened: they unexpectedly encountered gas in the drilling hole, which raised the pressure. The leak was closed and water was pumped into the hole to reduce the pressure. Next morning, St. Gallen was shaken by an earthquake that measured 3.6 on the Richter scale, followed by dozens of micro-earthquakes.“The worst case would be if the project was aborted or if no adequate thermal water resources could be found.” -- Elmar Grosse Ruse, project manager for climate and energy at the World Wildlife Fund

Since then, all eyes are on the city in Switzerland’s east. Engineers have managed to stabilise the drilling hole. Further test drilling has been cancelled. Decisions on the project’s future will be taken after thorough review. Damage to earthquake-affected buildings and infrastructure was negligible, but the reputation of geothermal energy has suffered considerably.

Geothermal energy is significant in Switzerland’s energy shift. It has already found wide use especially for heating buildings. However, Switzerland wants to use its underground also for electricity production, expecting it to contribute 4.29 GWh annually by 2050, which is about 7.5 percent of the country’s electricity consumption. So far, no geothermal power plant exists on Swiss soil.

Switzerland is not Iceland, where the required heat can be found only a few hundred metres below the surface. Here, the necessary minimum temperature of 100 degrees Celsius is found at a depth of 3,000 metres or more. Drilling such deep holes is a technical challenge, and also costly.

“An average geothermal power station costs around 80 to 100 million Swiss francs, around 75 percent of which is for the drilling,” says Peter Meier, CEO of the Swiss company Geo-Energie Suisse AG. His company is pushing for pilot projects in order to prove technical feasibility and economic viability.

But Switzerland’s geothermal efforts have suffered several major setbacks. A first project “Deep Heat Mining Basel” in the northwestern city Basel led to a series of earthquakes reaching up to 3.5 on the Richter scale in 2006, causing damage to buildings and infrastructure. The project was aborted.

A so-called petrothermal system was used in Basel. This is applied if no adequate thermal water resources are available. Petrothermal systems create artificial underground heat exchangers by cracking rock.

Alternatively, hydrothermal systems use natural thermal water resources in the depth. As such resources first have to be found, costly test drilling is necessary, and success is not guaranteed.

Following the abortion of the geothermal project in Basel, the city of Zurich invested 20 million Swiss francs (22 million dollars) into hydrothermal test drilling in 2009. The drilling did not cause seismic activity, but proved unsuccessful.

No water in the required amount and temperature was found; the hole could not be used for the anticipated electricity production, but only for heating.

Despite those two failures earlier, expectations of geothermal energy had remained high in Switzerland.

After the failure in Basel, experts had claimed that with improved technology, seismic activity caused by geothermal drilling would become insignificant. A different technique was used in St. Gallen, but that promise turned out to be false.

“Deep heat mining plays a significant role in Switzerland’s energy shift,” Elmar Grosse Ruse, project manager for climate and energy at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), told IPS. Along with all other major environmental organisations, the WWF supports geothermal energy.

Ruse said that the future of the technology in Switzerland depends on whether and how the project in St. Gallen continues.

“The worst case would be if the project was aborted or if no adequate thermal water resources could be found,” he said. Drawing the curtain over geothermal energy after a few unsuccessful efforts would be premature, he said.

“Honestly, no drilling, not even in tunnel construction, is entirely without risks. If we as a society decide to pull out of much riskier technologies such as nuclear power and to drastically reduce our CO2 emissions, we have to accept the minor risks of alternative technologies,” the WWF project manager said.

Meanwhile, Peter Meier’s Geo-Energie Suisse AG is searching for locations for petrothermal power stations. “We have learned from Basel,” he told IPS. Geo-Energie Suisse has always said that with drilling seismic activity may occur. “Our advanced technology leads to reduced seismic activity though, as our drilling technique disperses the pressure on many, already existing fissures in the rock.”

Technically, the incident in St. Gallen will not affect Meier’s projects. “We use a different method in a different rock.” Unlike in St. Gallen, most Swiss geothermal projects target crystalline rock.

Nevertheless, Meier is aware that in the near future, he’ll have to do a lot of additional persuading.

WWF’s Grosse Ruse said that it might be better to plan geothermal power stations further away from densely populated areas. The dilemma however is, that waste heat users may then be too far away.

“Heat can be easily transported, hence that’s not a decisive factor,” countered Meier. His company nonetheless targets such less populated areas, but for other reasons. The CEO stressed that it isn’t about using nearby inhabitants as guinea pigs, but points at another factor: “Insuring potential damages in cities would be way more expensive.”

A vegetable vendor in Bangalore using a solar lamp to light her stall. Credit: SELCO/IPS

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jun 13 2013 (IPS)

Emerging economies such as Mexico and India are shifting energy investments into renewable resources while industrialised countries hesitate, noted two new United Nations reports released Wednesday in Nairobi, Kenya.

“There is a structural change in the global energy sector underway,” said Ulf Moslener, head of research of the Frankfurt School in Germany.

“Costs are dropping radically. Renewables represented 6.5 percent of all electricity generated and reduced carbon emissions by 1 billion tonnes in 2012,” said Moslener, co-author of Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2013, a report sponsored by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

Developing countries are finding installing green energy to be far less expensive than relying on fossil fuels, Moslener told IPS. Poorer countries want to reap the benefits of stable energy costs, new jobs, improved air quality and reduced health and climate damage.

While political debates about the future of green energy preoccupy countries such as the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, developing countries have embraced cleaner energy. The move is reflected by a narrowing investment gap. In 2012, developing countries invested 112 billion dollars in clean energy, compared to developed economies’ 132 billion dollars."Around the world, there is a shift to clean energy."
-- Michael Liebreich

In 2007, developed economies’ investments were two-and-a-half times greater (excluding large hydro) than those of developing economies.

Globally, despite a 12 percent decline in investment, more renewable energy went online in 2012 than in any previous year, the main reason being a 30 to 40 percent drop in the cost of solar energy.

“Around the world, there is a shift to clean energy,” said Michael Liebreich, chief executive of Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Political complications

Investors understand that clean energy no longer costs more than fossil energy. As such, there is a lot of excitement about the potential of large-scale projects in wide range of countries.

Nevertheless, investments in clean energy in 2013 would have been higher had governments in Europe and North America not abruptly pulled back from green energy policies.

“No industry has been treated as badly as the clean energy sector, particularly in Europe,” Liebreich said in an interview.

Frequent and sometimes wholesale changes in renewable energy policies create market uncertainty, he said, so investors hold back, waiting for clarity and stability.

Such changes are being driven by polarised politics and a fact-free debate about future energy choices, particularly in the United Kingdom, United States, Australia and Canada. These countries are going to be five years behind the shift to low-cost, clean energy, he said.

Liebreich highlighted Canada’s obsession with its tar sands as good example of a government’s failure to comprehend that future economic success will be based on clean energy sources. “They are not serving the public interest,” he said.

New energy records

In 2012, China, the United States, Germany, Japan and Italy were the top five investors in renewables. Globally, solar photovoltaic installations reached a record 30.5 gigawatts (GW), while installed wind installations topped off at 48.4 GW – both new records, according the REN21 Renewables 2013 Global Status Report.

In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident, Japan is shifting from a nuclear-dependent energy policy and investing significantly in solar, geothermal and wind power.

In the Indian state of Gujarat, a 605 MW photovoltaic solar park, completed in April 2012, is expected to save about 8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. An amount of nearly 1 billion dollars was announced to go towards a 396MW wind project in Oaxaca State, Mexico.

“More and more countries are set to take the renewable energy stage,” said Achim Steiner, UNEP executive director. “Only last week the global host of World Environment Day, Mongolia, invited me to tour its first 50-megawatt wind farm.”

Mongolia has ambitious plans to harness wind and sun to power its future and supply clean energy to China and the region, Steiner said in a press conference in Nairobi.

“Like many other nations, it has seen the logic and the rationale of embracing a green development path,” he added.

A growing industry

An estimated 5.7 million people worldwide worked directly or indirectly in the renewable energy sector in 2012. The bulk of these jobs were in Brazil, China, India, members of the European Union, and the United States, with employment rising in other countries.

Selling, installing and maintaining small solar panels in rural Bangladesh, for example, employs 150,000 people directly and indirectly.

The transition from brown to green energy is gaining momentum as more countries, regions and cities realise that the shift is in their best economic interests, offering energy security, among other benefits.

Even the currently stalled U.N. climate talks won’t slow this shift, said Steiner, and a strong global climate treaty in 2015 could spur an increase in investment.

“The financial sector has factored in the glacial pace of the U.N. climate talks. Nothing that happens in that forum will reduce investment now,” said Liebreich.

Kawerau geothermal centre in New Zealand. Credit: Courtesy of New Zealand Trade & Enterprise

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, May 8 2013 (IPS)

Chile is one of the countries with the greatest potential for geothermal energy development in Latin America, but a lack of incentives for investment in the sector has kept it from moving past the exploratory phase. A strategic partnership with New Zealand aims to change that situation.

Geothermal energy is the heat energy from deep inside the Earth, which is brought to the near surface by thermal conduction and in some areas rises to the surface in natural streams of hot water or steam. This steam can be harnessed to power a turbine and generate electricity.

This long, narrow South American country stretches 4,270 kilometres along the slopes of the Andes Mountains, the world’s longest volcanic chain, according to the Andean Geothermal Centre of Excellence at the University of Chile.

Ten percent of all of the world’s volcanoes are found in Chile, “which represents significant potential in geological terms,” Gonzalo Salgado of the Chilean Geothermal Energy Association (ACHEGEO) told Tierramérica.

Chile forms part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, a belt of volcanoes and earthquake epicentres that in the Americas also encompasses Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Central America, Mexico and parts of Argentina, Bolivia, the United States and Canada. This belt contains numerous virgin territories for thermal energy exploration, said Salgado.

Geothermal energy offers a means of achieving greater energy self-sufficiency in Chile, which currently depends on imports for 70 percent of its energy needs.

“The solutions (for energy dependency) are numerous: we need to talk about energy efficiency and many other things, but obviously, geothermal power is one of the inputs that could help to solve this problem,” Salgado added.

According to a report from the Renewable Energies Centre of the Ministry of Energy, in 2012 non-conventional renewable energy sources represented five percent of the country’s total installed capacity for electricity production.

By comparison, renewable energy sources accounted for 77 percent of the electrical power supply in New Zealand in 2011.

The Chilean government currently aims to reach a 10 percent renewable energy share by 2024, although a bill is currently under discussion in Congress that would raise this target to 15 or 20 percent.

Chile was a pioneer in studying its geothermal potential. The first exploration was conducted in 1907 in El Tatio, a geyser field in the north of the country, and two wells were drilled in the area in 1931.

In the late 1960s, with the support of international financing, the government embarked on more systematic exploration in El Tatio, but these activities were eventually suspended.

In 2008, the Geotérmica del Norte consortium launched exploration activities in the Zoquete ravine, a few kilometres from El Tatio.

In September of the following year, a 60-metre plume of steam erupted from one of the wells drilled by the consortium to extract and re-inject geothermal fluids in order to evaluate the area’s potential for energy generation. This anomaly, which continued for more than three weeks, led the government to revoke the permit for these operations.

Despite the alarm that this incident caused among the public, which had begun to show interest in geothermal energy, Salgado maintains that it “did not affect the development” of this energy source in Chile.

Luis Mariano Rendón, director of Acción Ecológica, an environmental organisation, told Tierramérica that while all power generation has harmful effects, “geothermal energy is a relatively low-impact source of power generation” that Chile should pursue. The most pertinent factor would be the availability of water, which could limit its use in arid regions of the country, he noted.

Studies by the University of Chile estimate that the country could generate 16,000 megawatts (MW) of geothermal power, while the installed capacity for electricity production is 16,970 MW and the maximum demand is around 9,000 MW, according to official figures from February 2012.

A total of 76 concessions have been granted for geothermal exploration throughout the country, while another 42 are currently being processed and 24 are under study. However, as of now, not a single megawatt of power is produced from this source in Chile.

This situation spurred ACHEGEO to organise its 2nd International Congress on Geothermal Energy, held Apr. 11 and 12. The subjects discussed included legislation, the electricity market, environmental issues, and the need for risk insurance for geothermal drilling failure in Chile.

“What is needed is deep exploration drilling,” for which this type of insurance is crucial, as it would serve as a “concrete and tangible” incentive for the investment required, said Salgado.

To boost its geothermal development, Chile announced a strategic partnership with New Zealand, where 15 percent of electricity is produced from this source.

The Wairakei power station, built in 1957 in the centre of New Zealand’s North Island, was the world’s first wet steam power station and is still in operation today.

“In the last seven years, seven projects have been developed in New Zealand that add up to 550 MW. Thanks to these projects, all of them successful, we have been able to accumulate a good deal of knowledge and experience,” said Bernard Hill, the president of Geothermal New Zealand, an international geothermal consulting and promotion agency.

According to Hill, Chile is the country with the second greatest geothermal potential after Indonesia.

“The international geothermal industry is small, so the people involved know each other. Chile is seen as an important place for geothermal energy and this is reflected in the number of companies that are studying the possibility of investing here,” said Andrea Blair, the geothermal business development manager at GNS Science, another New Zealand-based consultancy firm in the sector.

Companies in New Zealand are seeking the development of mutual support, which would include the transfer of technological know-how with Chile, Blair told Tierramérica.

“Nobody knows Chile better than the Chileans themselves, and we know quite a lot about geothermal development, and so by working together we can ensure that our projects are successful,” she said.

In addition to its scientific and technological expertise, New Zealand can also offer its own experience in relations with indigenous communities when it comes to planning a project.

“There has to be a genuine commitment to the communities and to trying to understand the other side’s point of view, to know what they need, what they want, by maintaining a transparent discussion at all times,” said Blair.

“In New Zealand, the Maoris are part of the project and often they share in the profits as well,” she added.

The scenario she describes contrasts sharply with the situation in Chile, where numerous plans have been halted by the courts due to the opposition of indigenous communities who demand their right to prior consultation, in accordance with Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization.

In New Zealand, on the other hand, “before developing a project, the company has to go and speak with the owners of the land, who are almost always indigenous, and if they do not agree, the project doesn’t go forward,” said Blair.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Excerpt:

Dominica hopes geothermal will take a bite out of its 220-million-dollar a year fuel bill. Credit: Courtesy of Government Information Service (Dominica)

By Peter Richards
ROSEAU, Jan 22 2013 (IPS)

What a difference a trip makes. Before visiting the French island of Guadeloupe, Alfred Rolle had vocally expressed fears about the possible health effects of a decision to drill geothermal wells in the village of Laduat on the outskirts of Dominica’s capital.

Now he is singing a different tune after Dominica’s government, which is putting all its proverbial eggs in the geothermal basket, led a delegation over the weekend to the French island to observe the operations of the Bouillant Geothermal Plant there.

”We have spoken to the residents around the immediate area of the plant and they are less than four or five feet away and there is no ill effect about the project here,” Rolle told IPS.

“All the gases are properly contained and even the waste water is properly disposed of,” he said.

Geothermal wells release greenhouse gases trapped deep within the earth, but these emissions are much lower per energy unit than those of fossil fuels.

Dominica is currently leading 52 small island developing states in an ambitious bid to cut their carbon emissions a whopping 45 percent over the next two decades – far beyond anything pledged by the world’s richest nations.

Local resident Harris Hodge, who was also on the trip to Guadeloupe, said, “I can say what I have seen here puts to rest any doubt I had about the project back home.”

The endorsements are significant for the Roosevelt Skerrit government, which has spent millions of dollars developing the geothermal project here in the belief that it holds the key for a better socio-economic future for the island’s 100,000 people.

Energy Minister Rayburn Blackmoore, who led the delegation, told IPS that the government intends to implement more safety controls than exist at the 35-year-old plant in Guadeloupe.

“We are in 2013 and there are a number of measures we have taken to deal with the protection of the environment and prevent certain risks and that is why we have engaged the best experts,” he said.

In 2009, the government in collaboration with the Regional Councils of Guadeloupe and Martinique and energy and environmental agencies of the neighbouring French territories, banded together under the Caribbean Geothermal Initiative to undertake a surface investigation study to determine the island’s geothermal potential.

Following the comprehensive geological, geochemical, geophysical and related environmental and feasibility studies, the government said the island had the largest geothermal potential in the Caribbean.

With support from the European Union and the Agence Française de Dévelopement, three test wells will be drilled in the Laudat and Wotten Waven, part of the Roseau Valley area, to determine the potential of geothermal resources.

Prime Minister Skerrit told Parliament recently that his administration planned to construct a 10 to 15 megawatt geothermal plant in keeping with its policy of developing a carbon negative economy by the year 2020.

He said one study has shown that “such a geothermal plant could result in a reduction of electricity bills by 45 to 50 percent”.

“There is a strong likelihood that the plant could be operational by 2014,” he said, as the government announced it had signed an agreement with the Iceland Drilling Company to drill two full-sized geothermal wells in the Roseau Valley area at a cost of 6.7 million dollars. The drilling work is expected to commence by June this year.

But in recent weeks, residents of the villages in the Roseau Valley have been voicing concerns about the project at various community and town hall meetings.

One resident, Adenauer Douglas, himself an electrical engineer, said that while he has always been in support of the geothermal initiative, it “cannot be done in the absence of the people living in the area or an independent Environment Impact Assessment (EIA).

“The lack of inclusion and transparency to date has resulted in the present anxieties. For instance, some of the negative information circulating is the result of indifferent developers elsewhere not working in the best interest of residents and cutting corners on the best practices on health and the environment,” he said in a statement.

However, Douglas added that compared to fossil fuels, geothermal extraction releases far fewer greenhouse gases, about one-sixth less per unit of electricity generated.

“Binary plants, which are closed cycle operations, release minimal emissions. Like hydro and unlike wind or solar, geothermal has 90+ percent availability, with down time assigned to maintenance. Geothermal power is home grown, thus reducing our dependence on foreign oil and saving our country millions.

“As we continue to suffer from sea level rise, coral bleaching, and more ferocious hurricanes triggered by global warming, we in Dominica must be leading world advocates for the reduction of greenhouse gases and a green alternative to development,” he wrote.

Trade and Industry Minister Dr. Colin McIntyre, who is also the parliamentary representative for the area, said “the health concerns of the people of the Roseau Valley are extremely important to us and…we are hearing concerns being raised by the people with reference to poisonous gases, volcanoes, earthquakes and of course the land issue.”

Operations Manager of U.S.-based Geothermal Resource Group, Sam Abraham, one of the many experts brought in by the government to deal with the concerns raised by the residents, said that geothermal plants can exist within populated areas under strict environmental controls.

“We are very confident in terms of the technology that we have, the expertise that we have and the monitoring system that we have that this can be done effectively, safely, and for the betterment of the country,” he told a news conference.

He said that Kenya, for example, is in the process of building a geothermal plant within a national park and it has had no effect on the flora and fauna there.

Jaime Valladares in Guatemala City uses four solar heaters to provide hot water to his renters. Credit. Danilo Valladares/IPS

By Julio Godoy, Edgardo Ayala, and Danilo Valladares
BERLIN, Dec 27 2012 (IPS)

A recent agreement between El Salvador and Germany, with the latter supporting two renewable energy projects that would increase installed capacity in the Central American country by 94.2 megawatts by 2013, points to a promising alliance for carbon-free energy.

The first such project is the 14.2-megawatt ‘15 de Septiembre’ solar plant, slated to be one of the biggest of its kind in Latin America. The second initiative is the expansion of the ‘5 de Noviembre’ hydropower plant to increase capacity to 179.4 megawatts.

The two plants would supply 129,000 homes with power, according to an official communiqué from the Río Lempa Executive Commission, a government agency.

According to José Francisco Rodríguez, an expert on climate change in El Salvador’s Environment Ministry, “A policy launched this year by the national energy council has two objectives: reduce dependence on oil and by-products and keep the environmental impacts of energy production to a minimum.”

Since 2005, El Salvador has had in place a law to promote renewable energy sources, offering incentives in the form of tax exemptions for projects generating anything between 10 and 20 megawatts of power.

Geothermal sources currently provide 23 percent of all energy produced in El Salvador. A study published this year by the Japan International Coordination Agency (JICA) estimates that geothermal energy could generate an additional 89 megawatts by 2020.

“In addition, wind power is expected to generate 60 megawatts, and two hydroelectric plants are to be expanded: the abovementioned ‘5 de Noviembre’ will increase production by 80 megawatts, and El Chaparral, currently under construction, by 65 megawatts,” Rodríguez added.

Obstacles to production

Recent collaborations between German and Central American experts on renewable energy made one thing clear: governments in Central America will need to launch comprehensive industrial policies if they are to harness the full capacity of renewables.

Several Central American engineers from the private sector, in Germany for an educational tour sponsored by the German government back in October, told IPS that a lack of coordination between different sectors – such as education, finance, and technology imports – is hindering efforts to expand and optimise the renewables sector.

Germany has valuable lessons to share in this regard. Last year Chancellor Angela Merkel announced plans to phase out nuclear power by 2020, thereby further forcing innovation in the renewable energy sector.

The government hopes to increase energy supplied through offshore wind turbines to 25,000 megawatts by 2030. In terms of solar power, the country has an installed production capacity of more than 25,000 megawatts.

A year ago, Germany added 7,500 megawatts of capacity to the existing solar park, by utilising an eight-billion-dollar government subsidy.

But Germany’s model is not easy to replicate in Central America.

Raffaele Trapasso, administrator of the Rural Development Programme at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and author of a new study, ‘Linking renewable energy to rural development’, told IPS that industrial policies in the developing world need to take a holistic approach to renewables.

However, so far, “National and regional governments such as those in Central America tend to treat renewable energy as a single policy issue… deploying large-scale installations dealing with a small number of developers whose only interest is to get subsidies, grants or tax credits.”

In Guatemala, where energy innovation is based on the 2003 Law of Incentives for the Generation of Renewable Energy, production does not meet commitments on paper, despite regulations that ensure grants and tax and tariff exemptions.

José Granados, an expert in renewable energy sources, told IPS that Guatemala only produces 853 megawatts of solar power, far below installed capacity. Geothermal potential is also strong at 1,000 megawatts but the country only produces 49.2 megawatts annually.

The gap between potential and actual production is similar in the case of biomass, solar and wind power, he said.

Claus Schieber, an engineer who has been promoting the use of solar energy in Guatemala for nearly 30 years, recently in Germany at the Berlin-based Renewables Academy (RENAC), told IPS that renewable energy practitioners are forced to jump bureaucratic hurdles and navigate a dearth of credit, poorly-qualified technicians, and high customs duties when importing technology.

Furthermore, he said, Guatemala’s education system churns out post-graduate renewable energy specialists, but does not do enough to train and educate technicians, electricians and plumbers.

“Many of my highest-qualified colleagues have to carry out even the most simple technical tasks, which robs them of time they could be using more efficiently in conceiving new systems and promoting new projects,” Schieber said.

Coordinated national action could also help Central American governments extend power to rural areas, which are largely cut off from the electric grid.

In Guatemala for instance, the ministry of energy and mines reports that only 82 percent of the population has access to electricity. The 18 percent without power – about 530,000 households – are located in rural areas.

In El Salvador, only 83 percent of rural households have access to power, compared to 97 percent of urban dwellers.

The OECD reports that deployment of renewable energy into rural areas could benefit local communities, by providing affordable electricity and professional capacity building, as well as creating new revenue sources for the local governments, by increasing the tax base of their communities.

* Edgardo Ayala (San Salvador) and Danilo Valladares (Guatemala City) contributed to this article