Barbadians can look forward to paying less for electricity as Government is set to save big, thanks to a new energy policy.
Members of the Division of Energy, including Minister of Energy, Senator Darcy Boyce, announced the ambitious energy policy for 2017 to 2037 yesterday at the division’s offices in Country Road, St Michael.
Acting chief project analyst Bryan Haynes told the media the policy’s focus was transitioning the island from fossil fuel dependency to one that was energy efficient and renewable energy based.
Barbados could save almost a quarter of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in energy costs within the next two decades and Haynes laid out what this meant for the average person.
“Within the electricity production, we are talking about reducing costs by 24 per cent and with an economic benefit to Barbados of about $2.2 billion a year on average by 2037,” Haynes said.
“We anticipate that Barbados would become more energy secure and more energy independent and, as a result, we want to see that Barbados employ more of that domestic resource for its energy requirements. It speaks to a reduction in the cost of energy. Its target is really speaking to reducing the cost of energy by about 40 per cent by 2037,” he added.
The project analyst explained that by 2037 Barbados would have to reduce its fossil fuel usage by a whopping 75 per cent.
Haynes said this equated to moving from the current 11 000 barrels of fuel a day to 5 400.
In order to do this, Haynes said the island would generate 15 per cent of its power from solar, 20 per cent from the wind, 30 per cent from bio-mass and waste energy, 15 per cent from bio-fuels and 20 per cent from natural gas.
In 2015, Barbados got 74 per cent of its energy from heavy fuel oils, 17.4 per cent from kerosene, 5.6 per cent from bagasse, 2.2 per cent from diesel, 0.2 per cent from natural gas and a paltry 0.6 per cent from solar.
Boyce said he was aware of the high usage of such energy inputs. The importation of petroleum products in 2016 was almost $350 million, thanks to the decline in oil prices, down from almost $900 million in 2014.
And with the price of oil fluctuating, Boyce noted Barbados had to safeguard itself by moving towards renewable energy sources. (AD)
