BLOGGING THE CARIBBEAN RENEWABLE ENERGY FORUM

I attended the Caribbean Renewable Energy Forum (CREF) held in Jamaica, in October. It was well-attended and featured a packed programme of presentations and panel discussions on renewable energy issues and options in the region.

At the conference I heard the phrase “agnostic about renewables” a lot (and used it a couple of times myself I’m sure), which I guess is a safe position to take. There’s no single technology fix that’s going to secure the Caribbean’s energy future. In fact, the question of whether technology is the answer is something that’s been occupying me for the better part of the year, but that’s for another post.

That said, I think that, assisted by events such as the CREF, a fairly clear picture is emerging of the continuum of Caribbean renewable energy technology prospects, from the game-changers on the one hand, to the technologies that need to be in the game on the other. So here’s my list of the things we should be watching now in the Caribbean.

Geothermal is (as I had previously written) the game-changer in the Eastern Caribbean. Successfully implemented, interconnected geothermal power projects will provide abundant, renewable, baseload power to OECS countries at a predictable price, and will usher in the reality of hybrid and electric-vehicle transport in the region. Note that Dominica and St Vincent & the Grenadines, which are ranked 2nd and 3rd in the OECS for geothermal potential, already use more fuel for transport than in their power sectors. Memo to regional oil companies: you should be taking a serious look at geothermal energy as the 21st century driver of your energy business.

Wind energy is now the fastest growing renewable energy resource in the region, with some large projects on stream: Jamaica is upgrading its Wigton Wind Farm from 20 MW of installed capacity to 38 MW by July 2010 and Aruba has commenced construction of its 30 MW Vader Piet wind farm, also scheduled for completion in 2010. I think that the deployment of multiple small (@300 kW), collapsible wind turbines in distributed wind farms is an approach perfectly suited to the Caribbean, particularly for the smaller islands, but so far only the French island Guadeloupe has made any significant use of this windpower model. In any case, the bottom line is that the future of wind energy in the Caribbean looks very good.

For countries with relatively large populations and/or high rates of personal consumption (and therefore large waste output) Waste-to-Energy (WTE) makes complete sense, which would explain why two large WTE projects are now in progress in Jamaica (65MW) and the US Virgin Islands (49MW).

Continued development, improvement and upgrading of small hydro in the region is essential and, fortunately, ongoing. There are hydro projects at some stage of development now in progress in Belize, Dominica, Jamaica and St Vincent, all financed under the Caribbean Renewable Energy Development Programme (CREDP).

Ocean energy hasn’t yet made much of a splash. The ocean current regimes in parts of the region are considered by some to be quite favourable, but the shortage of fully-commercial ocean energy projects anywhere in the world isn’t helpful in bringing the technology to a region that can’t afford to be an early adopter.

Biofuels and biomass energy are always of interest in this region, but have made few inroads. The much-publicised debate on the role of biofuels in the 2008 ‘food crisis’ has left the sector with a definite image problem. Brazil, the world’s biofuels giant, has over the past 30 years created a huge, and hugely successful, biofuels sector based on sugarcane ethanol, that has replaced 50% of the country’s gasoline consumption. The Caribbean can’t match this using agriculturally-based biofuels production, but Jamaica has already made a small start, with its e10 program, which uses refined ethanol (produced in Jamaica from imported raw ethanol from Brazil) in a 10% blend with gasoline.

Solar thermal energy is truly the low-hanging fruit in the Caribbean RE space – and it’s not being picked. Barbados amply demonstrated, decades ago, how easy and inexpensive it is to make solar thermal energy a national success story with huge benefits. And yet, their excellent example has been all but ignored by the other countries.

As always, the belle of the ball was solar electricity and not surprisingly, the solar discussion panels generated the most heat!

I was intrigued by presentations on solar cooling projects that have been implemented on large commercial and institutional facilities in Europe and elsewhere. The technology appears to be developing rapidly and the economics are reported by its proponents to be far better than the economics of, say, installing PV panels to power space cooling needs. But, I didn’t get a sense that there was anything happening on this front in the Caribbean, despite the obvious facts that we have the sunshine and we need the cooling. As one local delegate passionately summed it up, “nutting naa gwaan!”

Jigar Shah, CEO of Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room, founder of SunEdison and pioneer of the solar-as-a-service business model for solar power, presented thought-provoking ideas on how to deliver solar electricity in large quantities to the Caribbean. Shah’s presentation was reflective of his thinking on how to enable the new paradigm for electric utilities – what he refers to as Utility 2.0 – and how to translate that to the Caribbean. (His ideas were well-received and I get the impression that several Caribbean utilities have been in follow-up discussions with him on this).

I believe that energy efficiency, one of the things only mentioned in passing at the CREF, is a critical component of the Utility 2.0 model, for the simple reason that whatever our sources of energy, we need to find ways to use it more efficiently: after all, even a resource such as solar PV can have a significant environmental footprint due to the materials and processes that go into its deployment.

All things considered, attending the CREF was a well-spent two days for me. Now some serious follow-up is needed by the people who can make things happen. I’d better get back to work…

Visit the CREF website or join the CREF group on LinkedIn here for post-conference information.

HOT SPRINGS ETERNAL

I had the pleasure of visiting Dominica recently. En route from the airport to the capital Roseau, the signs of geothermal energy potential were everywhere – from the smell of sulphur on the rainforest air, to the sight of people bathing in hot springs along the way.

Hot spring at Wotten Waven area, Dominica
Photo: H Samuel

I’m told that the sparsely-populated, mountainous island, popularly known as “The Nature Isle” has at least 9 active volcanic areas and too many hot springs to keep track of. So it should seem to be a natural for the exploitation of geothermal energy.

Geothermal is the most important prospect for renewable energy in the Caribbean, for two reasons: First, it represents baseload power – power that is constantly available at large scale, as opposed to solar and wind, which are intermittent resources and second, it is apparently widespread throughout the Caribbean.

The various studies that have been done of the geothermal potential of the Eastern Caribbean over the past two decades all basically say the same thing – that there appears to be significant geothermal potential in the region – and, crucially: that it appears to be far greater than present demand for electricity.

So if large geothermal resources are proven to be available on a few strategically-located islands (say Nevis in the north, Dominica in the middle and Grenada or St Vincent in the south), power can be made available via undersea transmission lines to the others, thereby creating an interconnected, renewable and sustainable electricity network spanning the Eastern Caribbean.

So (the inevitable question): why isn’t there more geothermal being used in the Caribbean? The region's only geothermal plant is in Guadeloupe, with an installed capacity of 15.5 MW, which is reported to provide close to 10% of Guadeloupe’s electricity demand.

As is the case with many RE technologies, a major issue is the up-front cost. Geothermal energy in particular is affected by this because, notwithstanding sulphurous valleys and hot springs: in order for a geothermal power plant to be built, specific explorations (geological, geochemical and geophysical studies, drilling a few holes through rock to depths of several thousand feet, etc.) must be carried out – and they are very expensive. For example; the recently-concluded exploration that established Nevis’ geothermal potential is reported by the developer to have cost US$8 million. The power plant construction is estimated at US$45 million, to install 11.6 MegaWatts of power, which can supply Nevis’ existing electricity demand (currently about 9 MW).

These costs sound high, but they actually represent an economic and environmental bargain (in a subsequent post, we’ll dig deeper into some details of the economics of geothermal vs diesel power on these islands).

The Nevis power plant construction is reported to be going ahead, so it looks as though Nevis will indeed become the Caribbean’s first green island. Meanwhile, Dominica is not far behind; there are two separate geothermal explorations proceeding on the island. One is funded by the European Union; the other is being carried out by the Nevis project developer. One or both of them could bear fruit; this would create the central point for geothermal electricity generation in the Eastern Caribbean. Then all we would need is another in the south and the foundation for the creation of an entire string of green islands would be in place.

Dominica’s geothermal explorations could be concluded by mid 2010, but significant hurdles exist. If her geothermal resources are proven, Dominica’s mountainous terrain will challenge the builders and increase the cost of building a power plant and the transmission lines required to get the power to end users. Then there are the technical, economic, business and political challenges of designing and building an interconnected Eastern Caribbean power grid.

But these challenges will pale in comparison to the legacy of failure we will leave if we continue a business-as-usual-with-a-few-incremental-improvements approach.

That time has passed.

More information on geothermal energy can be found here

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SUNNY WITH SHOWERS

The sun is our largest source of energy, but solar energy contributes less than 1% to global energy consumption. In the Caribbean we probably use a similar percentage. In other words: pretty close to zero.

Solar energy in the Caribbean basically refers to two things: solar thermal energy for water heating, and solar photovoltaics (PV) to directly generate electricity from sunlight. Of these, solar thermal easily accounts for the vast majority of our use and our only serious user is Barbados. In fact, Barbados is a world leader in solar thermal energy, as it is estimated that the island has the second highest number per capita of solar water heaters in the world!

Solar water heaters are simple devices that are cheap, effective, easy to install and maintain. And the Caribbean has plenty of the free fuel all year round, so a solar water heater pays for itself quickly, typically in three years or less. So, why is there so little use of solar water heating in the Caribbean? I think the reason is mostly due to a combination of three factors, one economic, one cultural and one related to government policy.

The first is that demand for hot water is higher in richer countries, particularly those with large tourism sectors, but many of the islands of the Caribbean are not quite in that category (yet).

The second is that in some of our countries there is a strongly-held belief that bathing in cold water is intrinsically better for the body. This belief has maintained a demand for cold water even as per capita incomes have increased.

The third factor – government policy – I think is the most important. Faced with several alternatives for doing a particular thing, consumers will not necessarily make the most economic choice. For someone who is building a house, an electric tank water heater priced at $1500 may seem a more attractive proposition than a $3200 solar water heater, never mind that the total cost of the electric heater over ten years will be far greater than that of the solar heater. But if the government provides an incentive for homeowners to spend the extra money up front (and provides some assistance enabling them to do so) then the right economic decision is encouraged.

This sort of government policy intervention has been the missing link in the region thus far.

This is unfortunate, because the fact is whether a country is rich or not, it just makes sense for it to save on its energy import bill by any reasonable means. And what could be more reasonable, in countries where sunshine is clearly abundant, than reducing the consumption of imported diesel fuel by replacing electric water heating with solar? This is no exaggeration: any government that takes this particular matter seriously could make a huge difference – just as the government of Barbados did decades ago.

Barbados, which is relatively rich and with a large tourism sector, got off to an early start with a solar water heating industry dating back to the 1970s (the decade in which the term ‘global energy crisis’ was coined). On the other hand, equally-rich Trinidad & Tobago may well have had significant demand for hot water, but locally-produced oil and gas has made electricity so cheap that no one bothers much what it’s used for.

The basic outline of the Barbados model was summarised in a paper published in 2000 by Professor Oliver Headley, the late dean of solar energy in the Caribbean. He advised that

"A crucial factor in creating the market was the provision of fiscal incentives by the Barbados government under the leadership of (then) Prime Minister Tom Adams. A householder could apply the cost of his water heater against his income tax for the year. The success was remarkable: 23,388 solar water heaters were installed in Barbados over the period from 1974 through 1992."

He goes on to note that

“In terms of avoided imports of fossil energy, the solar water heaters reduce annual imports by 33,000 tonnes of fuel, a saving of about $6.5 million US if one assumes a price of US$25 per barrel. These are the savings that the solar water heater industry achieves for Barbados, with its population of about 260,000. If solar water heating were applied over all the territories of the anglophone Caribbean, with a population of 5 million, to the same extent as in Barbados, savings would be US$125 million per year.”

These are compelling numbers and some Caribbean governments have taken notice, but few (if any) have engaged the matter as seriously as did Barbados’ government. Other incentives can be applied as well. For example: to defray initial costs, banks should be encouraged to automatically finance solar water heaters in new mortgages, and to rewrite existing mortgages to finance replacement of electric heaters.

The above things need to be done – and I believe they eventually will, for the simple reason that rising fossil fuel costs over the long run, coupled with our increasing awareness of the need to reduce carbon emissions, will accelerate adoption of this simple renewable energy technology that is perfectly suited to our region, dependent as it is on tourism for its economic vitality.

But for now, the proverbial rainy day is here. The current global economic crisis is deepening, and will probably get worse for us for a while before it gets better. In the very short term, don’t expect any significant increase in the use of solar energy. As the world emerges from this recession, the use of solar thermal energy in the Caribbean will grow.

What about photovoltaics? We’ll talk about that next week.