The Bahamas is focusing on renewable energy as it tries to preserve gains in tourism. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kenton X. Chance
ABU DHABI, Jan 21 2015 (IPS)

When it comes to tourism in the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM), The Bahamas — 700 islands sprinkled over 100,000 square miles of ocean starting just 50 miles off Florida — is a heavyweight.

With a gross domestic product of eight billion dollars, the Bahamian economy is almost twice the size of Barbados, another of CARICOM’s leading tourism destinations."Reducing our various countries’ dependence on fossil fuels, ramping up renewable energy, building more climate change resilience is incredibly important for us." -- Environment Minister Kenred M.A. Dorsett

Visitors are invited to “imagine a world where you can’t tell where dreams begin and reality ends.”

However, in the country’s Ministry of the Environment, officials have woken up to a reality that could seriously undermine the gains made in tourism and elsewhere: renewable energy development.

In 2014, in a clear indication of its intention to address its poor renewable energy situation, The Bahamas joined the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

The Abu Dhabi-based intergovernmental organisation supports countries in their transition to a sustainable energy future. IRENA also serves as the principal platform for international cooperation, a centre of excellence, and a repository of policy, technology, resource and financial knowledge on renewable energy.

The Bahamas has also advanced its first energy policy, launched in 2013, and has committed to ramping up to a minimum of 30 per cent by 2033 the amount of energy it generates from renewable sources.

“Currently, we are debating in Parliament an amendment to the Electricity Act to make provision for grid tie connection, therefore making net metering a reality using solar and wind technology,” Minister of Environment and Housing Kenred M.A. Dorsett told IPS on the sidelines of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW).

ADSW is a global forum that unites thought leaders, policy makers and investors to address the challenges of renewable energy and sustainable development. The week includes IRENA’s Fifth Assembly, the World Future Energy Summit, and the International Water Summit.

But Dorsett was especially interested in the IRENA assembly, which took place on Jan. 17 and 18.

At the assembly, ministers and senior officials from more than 150 countries met to discuss what IRENA has described as the urgent need and increased business case for rapid renewable energy expansion.

Dorsett came to Abu Dhabi with a rather short shopping list for both his country and the CARICOM region, and says he did not leave empty-handed.

“Our involvement in IRENA is important because the world over is concerned with standardisation of technology to ensure that our citizens are not taken advantage of in terms of the technology we import as we advance the renewable energy sector,” he told IPS.

“We certainly were able to engage IRENA in discussions with respect to what the Bahamas is doing, and our next steps and they have indicated to us that they will be able to assist us on the issue of standardisation,” Dorsett tells IPS.

Minister of the Environment and Housing in The Bahamas, Kenred Dorsett. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

He says IRENA has developed a programme that looks at practical consideration for the implementation or ramping up of renewable energy, including assistance in developing regulations for ensuring that standards are maintained.

“So, I think from our perspective, it is clear to us that IRENA would be prepared to assist us on that particular issue, and I think that generally speaking, what I certainly found was that the meeting was very innovative, particularly in light of the fact that there was a lot of technical support for countries looking to implement or deploy renewable energy technologies,” he said of Bahamas-IRENA talks on the sidelines of the assembly.

Dorsett also wanted IRENA to devote some special attention to CARICOM, a group of 15 nations, mostly Caribbean islands, in addition to Belize, Guyana and Suriname.

At a side event — “Renewables in Latin America: Challenges and Opportunities” — ahead of the Assembly, there was no distinction between Caribbean and Latin American nations.

“… I think that’s very, very important for us as region, as we move to ensure that CARICOM itself is a region of focus for IRENA, that we are not consumed in the entire Latin America region and there is sufficient focus on us,” he told IPS ahead of the assembly.

Dorsett is now convinced that CARICOM positions will be represented as Trinidad and Tobago, another CARICOM member, and the Bahamas, have been elected to serve on IRENA Council in 2015 and 2016, respectively.

“We do know that deployment of renewable energy in our region is important, we are small island development states, we live in [low-lying areas] and sea level rise is a major issue for us in the Caribbean region.

“Therefore, reducing our various countries’ dependence on fossil fuels, ramping up renewable energy, building more climate change resilience is incredibly important for us,” he told IPS.

Meanwhile, Director-General of IRENA, Adnan Amin, said that his agency is “trying to develop a new type of institution for a new time”.

“We know that the islands’ challenges are very particular. We have developed a lot of expertise in doing that, and we know in a general sense the challenge they face is quite different from mainland Latin America,” Amin told IPS. “So we see them as logically separate entities in what kinds of strategies we will have.”

He says IRENA has been working in the Pacific islands — early members of the agency — and is moving into the Caribbean.

Adnan Amin, Director-General of the International Energy Agency, says the Caribbean has “particular” renewable energy considerations that are distinct from Latin America. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

IRENA is already working in the Caribbean nations of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Grenada, and Jamaica, and this year agreed to lend St. Vincent and the Grenadines 15 million dollars to help fund its 10-15 megawatt geothermal power plant, expected to come on stream by 2018.

Dorsett is also pleased that at the assembly the Bahamian delegation was able to get a briefing on the advances of technology that stores electricity generated from renewable sources.

“That also can prove to be very important for us as many Caribbean counties are faced with addressing the issue of grid stability,” he told IPS, adding that the ability to have storage that is “appropriately priced and that works efficiently” can help the Bahamas to exceed the average of 20 to 40 per cent of electricity generated by renewable sources by many countries.

The Bahamas woke up to the realities of its poor renewable energy situation in 2013 when Guilden Gilbert, head the country’s Renewable Energy Association, decried the nation for not doing enough to advance renewable energy generation.

The call came after the release of a report by Castalia-CREF Renewable Energy Islands Index for the Caribbean, which ranked the Bahamas 26 out of 27 countries in the region for its progress and prospects in relation to renewable energy investments.

The 2012 edition of the same report had ranked The Bahamas 21 out of the 22 countries on the list.

In the two years leading up to the announcement of the “National Energy Policy & Grid Tie In Framework”, The Bahamas established an Energy Task Force responsible for advising on solutions to reducing the high cost of electricity in the country.

The government also eliminated tariffs on inverters for solar panels and LED appliances to ensure that more citizens would be able to afford these energy saving devices.

The government also advanced two pilot projects to collect data on renewable energy technologies. The first project provided for the installation of solar water heaters and the second project for the installation of photovoltaic systems in Bahamian homes.

Dorsett tells IPS that he thinks that it is “incredibly important” that CARICOM focuses on renewable energy generation.

“I think CARICOM, as a region, has to look at renewable energy sources to build a sustainable energy future for our region as well as to ensure that we build resilience as we address the issues of climate change,” he tells IPS.

However, in some CARICOM nations, there is a major hurdle that policy makers, such as Dorsett, will have to overcome before the bloc realises its full renewable energy potential.

“There are very special challenges in the Caribbean. For example, many of the utilities are foreign-owned and they negotiated 75-year-long, cast-iron guarantees on their existence,” Amin tells IPS.

“They were making money off diesel. They have no incentive to move to renewables, but we are moving ahead,” the IRENA chief says.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at Kentonxtchance@gmail.com

Follow him on Twitter @KentonXChance

The Zafarana wind farm in Egypt. Credit: IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
ABU DHABI, Jan 17 2013 (IPS)

Trying to predict the future of the energy sector is like trying to predict the weather in London in an era of global warming. But delegates had a go at it during the three-day World Future Energy Summit that ended in Abu Dhabi on Jan. 17.

They foresee new world leaders in the energy sector, the development of innovative forms of storing renewable power, and the creation of super grids to transport this energy, among the many possibilities. But all this will be accompanied by a host of “enormous” challenges, in the words of one expert.

“We never recognise a game changer until it has actually changed the game,” said Morten Mauritzen, president of ExxonMobil Affiliates in Abu Dhabi. He envisages a day when the United States may become a “net exporter” of energy because of the controversial fracking technology to extract shale gas.

As a representative of the world’s biggest oil and gas company by capitalisation, Mauritzen believes there is a future role for such corporations despite their checkered reputation. He stressed that an “integrated set of solutions” would be necessary to meet the needs of the world’s expanding population, forecast to reach nine billion by 2050, and he sees fossil fuels as being an inevitable part of the energy mix.

But many other delegates see various possibilities, especially as an increasing number of countries turn to renewable energy.

“We don’t need to wait for any breakthrough technology, we can start now,” said Bjorn Haugland, executive vice president and chief technology and sustainability officer for the Norwegian risk-management foundation Det Norske Veritas (DNV).

Over the past three years, the company has boosted its climate change services, and on Friday Haughland announced the creation of a new research unit in Holland that will focus on “smart grids” and “super grids”.

For the DNV executive, battery technology and super grids for energy are key to the successful development of the renewables field.

“Storage is about efficiency,” Haughland told IPS. “The demand for energy is going up and up, and so in order to be efficient, we should have the ability to store energy when we have enough of it, and to use it when we want.”

But storage technology lags behind other areas of the “green” sector, and batteries developed to store renewable energy are still way too expensive to be competitve, he said. Transportation of batteries is also a concern for environmentalists, and that’s where the grids come in.

Super grids will be used to transport high amounts of energy over long distances, and this could revolutionise the green sector as solar energy produced in one region can be sent to another, Haughland said.

“These will be essential for renewable energy over the next 20 years,” Haughland said. “We see super grids already developing in India, China and some places in Europe.”

Another scenario is the production of electricity on site where it’s needed, with the result that big traditional power plants may one day become a thing of the past. Localised production of electricity through the use of solar panels, for example, is already happening around the world and several participants at the summit predicted that it will become much more common.

“One of the things I’m most excited about is the move from a central utility business model, where utilities have large power plants and they’re feeding power into the grid, to smaller generating sources at the point of consumption,” said Scott Burger, a solar markets analyst at U.S.-based GTM Research.

“We’re already starting to see that in areas of the world like Germany and Japan where there is a high penetration of photovoltaic systems on houses and commercial buildings,” he told IPS. “So there’s going to be a need for traditional utility business models to adapt to that.”

Countries and utility companies are waking up to this prospect and trying to diversify, Buger added, but national policies differ largely around the globe. Some governments still seem reluctant to invest in new technology, while others are making a loud and clear commitment to the sector.

Abu Dhabi, for instance, aims to generate seven percent of its power from renewable energy by 2020, according to Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the chief executive officer of the emirate’s renewable energy company Masdar.

In fact, many of the predictions by delegates at the energy summit are already a reality at the company’s multi-billion-dollar project known as Masdar City – a showcase for “green” energy that is being built in stages and expected to be completed by 2025.

The first stage comprises a science and technology institute, with living quarters for students and several shops, all powered by solar energy that’s fed into the emirate’s electricity grid. Buildings are designed in a way to make the most of natural resources, including use of the wind to cool hot outdoor areas.

If, despite some delays and revisions, the project proves to be successful on a larger scale, it could represent a brave new world.