Minister of Energy, Small Business and Entrepreneurship, Kerrie Symmonds
The current administration is looking to ensure that industry at all levels is driven by Renewable Energy (RE), supplementing all current industries with the initiative.
Minister of Energy, Small Business and Entrepreneurship, Kerrie Symmonds was making remarks at the Barbados National Oil Co Ltd, during a recent visit, about the push of the government for Barbados to be one hundred percent fossil free, carbon neutral and driven by renewable energy by 2030.
Symmonds explained that the island had been reliant on the sugarcane industry and in recent decades, the tourism industry. However he stated that an opportunity to
make a change to how things have been done traditionally had presented itself, due to the impact of COVID-19.
“A genuine modern economy has to be more multifaceted. It has to be more diversified, it has to be more obviously energy independent and that energy independence must be used to fuel different forms of industry,” said Symmonds.
The minister explained that the government anticipated increased supply demands on the grid as the initiative progressed towards more reliance on renewable energy.
“We will be moving ever closer to vehicles that need to be powered by electricity.
We would want to supplement the use of natural gas by electricity, we want to supplement pretty much everything that we are doing and in addition to that we want to make sure that industry at all levels is driven by renewable energy,” explained Symmonds.
The Energy minister also made the point that it would only be through the access of the cheapest forms of energy that Barbados would once again get back to some level of serious and effective manufacturing, including value added manufacturing. (AS)
