Re­new­able en­er­gy has cre­at­ed a world of op­por­tu­ni­ty for so­ci­ety to seek out al­ter­na­tive, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly re­spon­si­ble modes of gen­er­at­ing en­er­gy. It chal­lenges us to ap­ply the prin­ci­ples of en­gi­neer­ing and sci­ence to har­ness pow­er from nat­ur­al re­sources such as the sun, wind, air and wa­ter.

Re­new­able en­er­gy stim­u­lates eco­nom­ic growth, pro­vides job op­por­tu­ni­ties and pover­ty re­duc­tion in im­pov­er­ished ar­eas, and en­sures our en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. This re­source has be­come more crit­i­cal at a time when the price of crude oil has dras­ti­cal­ly dropped to un­der US$60 per bar­rel, pre­sent­ing great eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty for oil-pro­duc­ing coun­tries. T&Ts own 2015 bud­get was based on a pro­ject­ed crude oil cost of US$80 per bar­rel, a key rev­enue earn­er for the coun­try. This is, there­fore, an ide­al op­por­tu­ni­ty for the world to in­ten­sive­ly ex­plore the ben­e­fits of this nat­ur­al re­source.

Through glob­al­i­sa­tion, re­new­able en­er­gy is quick­ly ex­pand­ing across con­ti­nents, es­pe­cial­ly in the de­vel­op­ing world. Ac­cord­ing to the Re­new­ables 2014 Glob­al Sta­tus Re­port, "as mar­kets have be­come more glob­al, re­new­able en­er­gy in­dus­tries have re­spond­ed by in­creas­ing their flex­i­bil­i­ty, di­ver­si­fy­ing their prod­ucts, and de­vel­op­ing glob­al sup­ply chains." Here in the Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean re­gion, re­new­able en­er­gy ini­tia­tives are al­ready chang­ing the en­er­gy land­scape. The re­port con­firmed that at least 19 coun­tries in the re­gion had re­new­able en­er­gy poli­cies by 2014, and at least 14 had re­new­able en­er­gy tar­gets, most­ly for elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion.

Fi­nan­cial in­cen­tives and gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy have sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost­ed in­vest­ments in the re­gion. Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, coun­tries such as Chile, Mex­i­co, and Uruguay com­mit­ted over US$ 1 bil­lion each in re­new­able en­er­gy in­vest­ments, with sev­er­al coun­tries adopt­ing feed-in tar­iffs (pro­vid­ing price cer­tain­ty and long-term con­tracts that help fi­nance re­new­able en­er­gy in­vest­ments), pub­lic com­pet­i­tive bid­ding (ten­der­ing), tax in­cen­tives, and quo­tas to dri­ve op­por­tu­ni­ties. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, eight coun­tries had net me­ter­ing laws by year's end, with pi­lot projects op­er­at­ing in Cos­ta Ri­ca and Bar­ba­dos.

Brazil's re­new­able en­er­gy mod­el is cer­tain­ly one for the re­gion to repli­cate as it proud­ly stands among the top five coun­tries in the world for hy­dropow­er, so­lar wa­ter heat­ing ca­pac­i­ty, biodiesel and fu­el ethanol pro­duc­tion. Thir­teen per cent of that coun­try's trans­port fu­el is de­rived from bio­fu­els, a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for the South Amer­i­can coun­try.

Oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion have al­so un­der­tak­en key re­new­able en­er­gy ini­tia­tives. For ex­am­ple, Uruguay aims to gen­er­ate 90 per cent of its elec­tric­i­ty from re­new­able sources by 2015, and com­plet­ed a Glob­al En­vi­ron­ment Fa­cil­i­ty fund­ed En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy Project in 2012 (world­bank.org). The project re­sult­ed in en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy be­com­ing a core com­po­nent of the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Strat­e­gy with over 73 en­er­gy ser­vice com­pa­nies (ES­CO) be­ing reg­is­tered, with 19 in ac­tive op­er­a­tion. Sim­i­lar­ly, Grena­da tar­gets 20 per cent pri­ma­ry en­er­gy from re­new­ables by 2020. This rel­a­tive­ly small coun­try has im­ple­ment­ed sev­er­al im­pres­sive re­new­able en­er­gy projects in­clud­ing the Sus­tain­able En­er­gy De­vel­op­ment plan; the so­lar hot wa­ter project where­by a grant by the Trust for the Amer­i­c­as would be used for low-cost, long-term loans for cit­i­zens to pur­chase the hot wa­ter sys­tems; the Earth Home Project fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the Sus­tain­able De­sign Group where­by a mod­el earth home will be cre­at­ed for fu­ture de­vel­op­ers.

In T&T, re­new­able en­er­gy is a crit­i­cal field in the en­er­gy sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly since in 2010 the coun­try had the sec­ond high­est car­bon emis­sions per capi­ta in the world (world­bank.org). The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs com­menced work on the es­tab­lish­ment of the Re­gion­al Re­new­able En­er­gy Cen­tre in 2013, along­side the in­stal­la­tion of so­lar-pow­ered se­cu­ri­ty lights at nine com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres in T&T. A pi­lot so­lar ther­mal project com­menced at 25 schools in­volv­ing the in­stal­la­tion of so­lar pho­to­volta­ic sys­tems and dis­til­la­tion units com­bined with a teacher train­ing pro­gramme in col­lab­o­ra­tion with UWI and UTT. There is al­so a Wind Re­source As­sess­ment Pro­gramme (Wrap) be­ing con­duct­ed along the east coast of Trinidad to ex­plore the po­ten­tial es­tab­lish­ment of a wind tur­bine farm to gen­er­ate en­er­gy. The min­istry al­so em­barked on a Na­tion­al En­er­gy Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Cam­paign sen­si­tis­ing the pub­lic about en­er­gy con­sump­tion, which earned a Green Leaf Award from the EMA in 2014.

St Kitts and Nevis has al­so demon­strat­ed how small is­land de­vel­op­ing states can adapt to cli­mate change through re­new­able en­er­gy re­sources. At more than 14,000 square feet, St Kitts and Nevis has opened the largest green­house in the re­gion, with the in­ten­tion of in­te­grat­ing tourism, agri­cul­ture and re­new­able en­er­gy. The coun­try al­so plans to es­tab­lish two so­lar pan­el farms fol­low­ing the suc­cess of the coun­try's on­ly so­lar farm lo­cat­ed at the Robert L Brad­shaw In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. For a coun­try of on­ly 261 square kilo­me­tres, St Kitts and Nevis has cer­tain­ly done the en­vi­ron­ment proud.

Re­new­able en­er­gy pro­vides sub­stan­tial ben­e­fits to the re­gion's eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and will con­tin­ue to evolve over the years. Since the re­gion is par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to the ef­fects of cli­mate change, the use of re­new­able en­er­gy is an im­por­tant com­po­nent in mit­i­ga­tion. The ini­tia­tives out­lined are a tes­ta­ment that de­vel­op­ing coun­tries can im­pact on the glob­al en­er­gy sec­tor, with the sup­port of leg­isla­tive and fi­nan­cial in­cen­tives.

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