A major surge in renewable energy investment is set to launch within weeks as the government fast-tracks its Energy Transition Investment Plan, a multibillion-dollar initiative projected to save the island $16 billion over the next decade and create thousands of green jobs, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Kerrie Symmonds told Parliament on Tuesday.
Barbados Light & Power has committed to purchasing the power generated from a wind farm at Lamberts, St Lucy, the first of the transition projects, he said.
The plan is expected to increase employment by 50 per cent, and attract up to $20 billion in new investment, Symmonds told the House of Assembly as he introduced the Barbados National Energy Company (Transfer and Vesting of Assets) Bill.
The transformation would see the launch of a $180 million wind farm at Lamberts in the next three weeks (Tuesday November 18), supported by a loan from the Caribbean Development Bank. The project, originally designed as a 10-megawatt installation, has since been expanded to 50 megawatts to meet national energy targets.
The senior minister added that the power purchase agreement for the Lamberts wind farm was already finalised.
“I am advised that the power purchase agreement for Lamberts is now completed and embedded,” he said, noting that the project would follow the earlier wind energy pilot at Guinea, St John, which had marked Barbados’ first entry into commercial-scale wind generation.
Symmonds said the initiative was a major step towards securing the island’s economic and energy future through renewable technology, highlighting that the Energy Transition Investment Plan would lower national energy costs by 37 per cent by 2035 while creating approximately 1,500 new green jobs.
“The Energy Transition Investment Plan speaks to this country in the context of cost-benefit analysis. [It] uses solar and wind energy as the model for the future. Barbados saves $16 billion between now and the year 2035. That is the projected savings to our economy,” he said.
“We would be in an economy where it is 37 per cent less expensive. The plan speaks to the driving of investment to the tune of $19 to $20 billion in new investment, creating an estimated 1 500 jobs between now and the year 2035, green jobs. We will be able to increase the rate of jobs in this country by 50 per cent.”
Young people would be the main beneficiaries of emerging opportunities in the renewable energy field, the foreign minister declared. “If there’s any entity, any sector to benefit in Barbados from this effort in renewable energy, it must be our young people. It must be the people who will be the generation of tomorrow,” he said, noting that new skills such as microgrid design and wind turbine technology would be in demand.
He further announced that the government intended to give ordinary Barbadians a direct stake in the energy sector through the establishment of a new investment mechanism.
“That process will be another effort at democratising renewable energy investment opportunities for the people of Barbados. The pledge of the Barbados Labour Party in energy is that we would take the ordinary citizen on this journey of energy transition and transformation with us.”
He said the Ministry of Finance would soon present legislation to create and regulate a unit trust that would enable the average Bajan to invest collectively in renewable projects.
“It will be open to investors of all types. The cashier who is working in the supermarket, the lawyers in your law chambers, the operators of public service vehicles, whosoever will,” he said. “It is an opportunity to pool resources. Investors in the unit trust are not shareholders, they are beneficiaries. The fund is managed professionally, and the investment goals will have to be defined, the objectives are defined, and obviously, there is a trustee who holds the fund manager accountable.”
sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.bb
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