Mod­erni­sa­tion of elec­tric­i­ty grids and joint in­vest­ment is a part of the con­ver­sa­tion that Caribbean coun­tries should be hav­ing to move away from their fos­sil fu­el pasts and in­to re­new­able en­er­gy fu­tures, ac­cord­ing to Bar­ba­dos Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and Busi­ness, Lisa Cum­mins.

Speak­ing vir­tu­al­ly to stake­hold­ers at the Caribbean Sus­tain­able En­er­gy Con­fer­ence in the Hilton Ho­tel on Mon­day, Cum­mins said the ques­tion that should be asked now is whether the var­i­ous coun­tries’ grids have the abil­i­ty and ca­pac­i­ty to reach the re­new­able en­er­gy tar­gets in the time­frame set. That be­comes an is­sue of se­cu­ri­ty, she not­ed.

In 2024, Cum­mins said Bar­ba­dos spent close to US$1 bil­lion, in fos­sil fu­el im­ports, and the pre­vi­ous year, the is­land spent US$924 mil­lion in fos­sil fu­el im­ports, That re­sult­ed in for­eign ex­change drain, but al­so it was mon­ey spent that could be used for oth­er pur­pos­es.  

“En­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty then be­comes how do we take the re­sources, whether it’s the sun, wind, on­shore, off­shore, ge­ot­her­mal, and then con­vert that in­to en­er­gy sources to pow­er our res­i­den­tial homes, com­mer­cial plants, and how do we sus­tain­ably do that? That be­comes a ques­tion of en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty as well, tran­si­tion­ing from fos­sils to re­new­ables.”

The min­is­ter out­lined that this a con­ver­sa­tion that Bar­ba­dos has been hav­ing as well, about types of tech­nol­o­gy fi­nanc­ing mech­a­nisms, avail­able whether from de­vel­op­ment fi­nance in­sti­tu­tions (DFI) or com­mer­cial banks. Both meth­ods of fi­nanc­ing are avail­able in Bar­ba­dos, but the bank­a­bil­i­ty of projects is very much key to the con­ver­sa­tion.  

“But I want to raise with you here in this con­ver­sa­tion the im­por­tance of en­er­gy in­te­gra­tion, pooled col­lab­o­ra­tion across the Caribbean re­gion, and how it ben­e­fits not just our en­er­gy tran­si­tion tar­gets, but our con­sum­ing pub­lic in the re­gion,” Cum­mins said.

She in­di­cat­ed that the pop­u­la­tions peo­ple in many of the Caribbean coun­tries are not in­ter­est­ed in whether the projects are bank­able. They want an­swers to the most com­mon ques­tions, which are, “Is this go­ing to make elec­tric­i­ty more af­ford­able and is the con­sumer go­ing to go­ing to have to choose be­tween elec­tric­i­ty and oth­er bills.

“As we have this con­ver­sa­tion around fi­nanc­ing and se­cu­ri­ty and chang­ing for­eign ex­change in­to do­mes­tic ca­pac­i­ty and us­ing re­new­ables, we have to keep the con­sumer and the abil­i­ty to sub­sidise in­vest­ment costs at the fore­front of our con­ver­sa­tion.

“That too is a part of en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, be­cause that is na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, so­cial se­cu­ri­ty, and its peo­ple-cen­tred se­cu­ri­ty. And that’s one of the con­ver­sa­tions that I want to con­tin­ue to in­tro­duce in­to every last one of our en­er­gy con­ver­sa­tions when we’re sit­ting and speak­ing with in­vestors,” the min­is­ter said.|

Fur­ther, Cum­mins said this month Bar­ba­dos is go­ing to mar­ket its first com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment for bat­tery en­er­gy stor­age sys­tems and the gov­ern­ment is go­ing to the mar­ket as well with a re­quest for pre­qual­i­fi­ca­tion for its first on­shore ma­jor wind project.

“We have to be able to ad­dress the op­por­tu­ni­ties that ex­ist for Bar­ba­dos to do this. Ja­maica went to the mar­ket ear­li­er this year and they’re go­ing to the mar­ket again in Au­gust for projects.”

 The sec­ond el­e­ment the min­is­ter raised was polling the in­vest­ment of re­gion­al coun­tries in re­new­able en­er­gy projects to­geth­er.  

“With the sup­port of the In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cor­po­ra­tion and the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at, we just looked across the re­gion at all of the re­new­able en­er­gy po­ten­tial projects that ex­ist across the re­gion, whether it is in ge­ot­her­mal, if it is in hy­dro, as is the case in Guyana and Suri­name, ex­cess pho­to­volta­ic ca­pac­i­ty, on­shore wind, off­shore wind, float­ing, and fixed to bot­tom.

“What are the op­por­tu­ni­ties for us across the re­gion to in­vest in re­new­able en­er­gy projects joint­ly?  Many, many moons ago, we talked about shared in­vest­ment ca­pac­i­ty,” Cum­mins out­lined.

 She said the cur­rent junc­ture presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the re­gion to have joint projects and in­vest­ments in the re­new­able en­er­gy space.

“And these things all tak­en to­geth­er, bal­anc­ing the re­vi­sions of the ex­ist­ing, in the case of Bar­ba­dos, re­new­able en­er­gy feed-in tar­iffs to be able to en­sure that it has the ca­pac­i­ty for joint pro­cure­ment in Bar­ba­dos us­ing com­pet­i­tive means, which is what the coun­try is do­ing now and the next phase is com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment,” she said.

Go­ing in­to full pro­cure­ment across the re­gion would mean work­ing with de­vel­op­ment part­ners to have grants and sub­si­dies to sup­port the bot­tom line, in­vest­ing in more bank­able projects, but keep­ing the con­sumer and the peo­ple of the re­gion at the fore­front of gov­ern­ment con­ver­sa­tions.

“The Bar­ba­dos gov­ern­ment in March of this year, when we host­ed the Sus­tain­able En­er­gy Fo­rum, launched an en­er­gy tran­si­tion in­vest­ment plan.  

“We’ve mapped out the costs as­so­ci­at­ed with in­vest­ing in Bar­ba­dos’ re­new­able en­er­gy sec­tor through 2035. I’d like to be able to see, po­ten­tial­ly, to­geth­er with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB), and all the oth­er de­vel­op­ment part­ners, how across the re­gion we can quan­ti­fy what the in­vest­ment cost would be across the re­gion, and look at abate­ment tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor by sec­tor, so there is a ar­tic­u­lat­ed pro­gramme,” Cum­mins added.