I can remember a statement made by a senior politician in Tobago a few years ago that "garbage" has no money in it. Yet a major headline in the press of March 18, stated "B'dos to build US$241m (clean) energy plant."Congratulations Barbados! Our politicians still don't get it. We are only talking about diversifying and our neighbour to the north has signed a deal that will bring in valuable foreign exchange, create high-value jobs (650 skilled jobs) and will use waste to generate clean energy.
This is indeed a significant event for an energy-starved nation like Barbados and will mean less oil imports from T&T in the future. The facility will begin operations by the second quarter of 2017 according to the article.
To be able to attract this kind of investment and commission an investment of this nature can in fact take three to four years. So why haven't we been able to do this? Historically, the poor fortune of resource-rich countries was attributed to sloth. As the 16th century French political philosopher Jean Bodin put it: "Men of a fat and fertile soil (Trinidad) are most commonly effeminate and cowards; whereas contrariwise a barren country (Barbados) makes men temperate by necessity, and by consequence careful, vigilant and industrious."
Investment opportunities pass us day-in, day-out because we take too long to ponder the benefits of the investment and how we can actually turn potential into actual investment, which takes years. I can remember chocolate companies from Japan, and waste-to-energy and other types of non-energy investors seeking to set up shop in T&T but these investments were never given priority and the processes were painfully long.
What did we lose out? High-value jobs for UWI graduates, foreign exchange, integrating local industry with foreign expertise, diversification of the economy among others.
We have been talking about renewable energy for the longest while but no significant investments have materialised. For example, we keep hearing the same old story of a wind assessment being done by the Ministry of Energy to determine the best location to set up wind mills across the country. This has been going on since 2006 or earlier. Wake up, we are in 2014 with no major investment in wind energy and the contribution of renewable energy to our grid is virtually nil.
While Barbados seeks to proactively turn potential into actual investment in clean energy and drive down their fossil fuel consumption, it seems we are content to drink oil, eat gas and blow wind for a long time to come.
D Basdeo
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