Awards to­talling US$200,000 are up for grabs in the 2012 IDEAS En­er­gy In­no­va­tion Con­test for the Caribbean. The con­test is invit­ing pro­pos­als for projects and en­ter­pris­es which pro­mote en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy and ac­cess to re­new­able en­er­gy in the Caribbean re­gion. Ap­pli­ca­tions from T&T, An­tigua and Bar­ba­da, Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Do­mini­ca, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Grena­da, Guyana, Haiti, Ja­maica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and­Suri­name are in­vit­ed. UKAid from the De­part­ment of In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (DFID), GVEP In­ter­na­tion­al, South Ko­rea and the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) launched the con­test on Feb­ru­ary 15 to de­vel­op in­no­v­a­tive ideas to im­prove en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy and ex­pand ac­cess to re­new­able en­er­gy in the Caribbean. The con­test, which has as its re­gion­al mar­ket­ing cam­paign, What's your bright IDEA?, is in­tend­ed to pro­mote in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions to en­er­gy prob­lems that have lo­cal or re­gion­al ben­e­fits, pro­vide jobs and re­duce green­house gas emis­sions. Award win­ners will re­ceive up to US$200,000, as well as tech­ni­cal and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment sup­port to im­ple­ment or scale up their ideas.

In­di­vid­u­als, en­ter­pris­es and or­gan­i­sa­tions based in the Caribbean are in­vit­ed to sub­mit pro­pos­als fo­cus­ing on adop­tion, in­no­va­tion, as­sim­i­la­tion, de­vel­op­ment and trans­fer of tech­nolo­gies in re­new­able en­er­gy, en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy, cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion and fos­sil fu­el sub­sti­tu­tion by April 30. Ap­pli­ca­tions should be sub­mit­ted elec­tron­i­cal­ly. De­tails and guid­ance are avail­able at: www.iadb.org/ideas. Grant win­ners will be an­nounced Ju­ly 15. "The Caribbean has great po­ten­tial for eco­nom­i­cal­ly and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able en­ter­pris­es in re­new­able en­er­gy and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy," said Si­mone Ban­is­ter, cli­mate change ad­vis­er at DFID Caribbean, in a state­ment. "Sim­ple in­no­va­tions could have a dra­mat­ic ef­fect on en­er­gies sup­plies, prices and the way busi­ness­es and mar­kets op­er­ate in the re­gion." En­er­gy in the Caribbean is cur­rent­ly pro­duced al­most ex­clu­sive­ly from im­port­ed fos­sil fu­els, Ban­is­ter ex­plained.

"As a re­sult, con­sumers are pay­ing high prices for elec­tric­i­ty, trans­port fu­els and oth­er forms of en­er­gy. So far, the use of al­ter­na­tive sources of en­er­gy, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­new­ables, has been lim­it­ed. We're hop­ing to help change that." "Lo­cal in­no­va­tion and the adap­ta­tion of ex­ist­ing tech­nolo­gies to lo­cal cir­cum­stances are key to boost­ing the com­pet­i­tive sup­ply of re­new­able en­er­gy ser­vices and tack­ling en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns"said Ar­nal­do Vieira de Car­val­ho, lead en­er­gy spe­cial­ist at the IDB, said in the state­ment.

What is IDEAS?

IDEAS is an en­er­gy in­no­va­tion con­test to sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of in­no­v­a­tive projects pro­mot­ing re­new­able en­er­gies, and im­prov­ing en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy. IDEAS was first launched in Feb­ru­ary 2009, with the sup­port of the IDB, the Gov­ern­ment of Ko­rea, non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion GVEP In­ter­na­tion­al and the Ger­man Tech­ni­cal Co­op­er­a­tion for De­vel­op­ment (GIZ). The con­test is fund­ed by the Min­istry for Eco­nom­ic Co-op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment of Ger­many (BMZ) and the Nether­lands Di­rec­torate-Gen­er­al of De­vel­op­ment Co­op­er­a­tion (DGIS). It re­ceived more than 1,000 ap­pli­ca­tions from 28 Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean coun­tries. A to­tal of 26 win­ners were se­lect­ed in Ar­genti­na, Brazil, Colom­bia, Chile, El Sal­vador, Guatemala, Hon­duras, Mex­i­co, Pana­ma, Pe­ru, Saint Vin­cent and The Grenadines and St Luc&ia­cute;a. A sec­ond phase of IDEAS was launched on Sep­tem­ber 15, 2011, in co-op­er­a­tion with the Mex­i­can Sec­re­tari­at of En­er­gy with the sup­port of the Sus­tain­able En­er­gy Fund (FSE), the IDB and the South Ko­re­an Gov­ern­ment to pro­mote in­no­va­tion in sus­tain­able en­er­gy.