From left: Prime Minister the Right Honourable Freundel Stuart; CARICOM Secretary General, Ambassador Irwin LaRocque; Pim van Ballekom, Vice President of the European Investment Bank and Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, Senator Darcy Boyce were among those attending the opening ceremony of the conference
“Barbados also intends to achieve an economy wide reduction in Greenhouse Gas Emissions of 44 per cent compared to a Business As Usual scenario by 2030. These targets will be achieved through a diversified portfolio of renewable energy projects and energy efficiency programmes which include waste to energy, bio-mass, landfill gas to energy and bio-energy projects,” he said.
PM Stuart added that in order to achieve the targets, he told the audience which included representatives from 50 countries around the world, that his Government has been granting attractive fiscal incentives for green energy initiatives and has also legislated a new regulatory regime to enable Independent Power Producers at the distributed and utility scale level to sell electricity to the grid from renewable energy systems. The Prime Minister further stated that that regime will be fully implemented by the mid-2017.
“There are now over nine megawatts of intermittent renewable energy generating systems connected to the grid with most of these being solar photovoltaic units. Another ten megawatts will be commissioned this month and we expect that by this time next year we would have issued licenses for 65 megawatts of renewable energy generation capacity to be commissioned by early in the year 2018,” he stated.
His comments came as he explained that to date, over 1 000 households and businesses have had such systems connected to the grid. This, he said, is a clear demonstration that success can be achieved in that area, just as the country has reaped success with solar water heaters which has a penetration rate in excess of 34 per cent. (JRT)