Lindeners in Guyana are on strike in the South American country to protest an imminent increase in electricity rates in the bauxite community. According to Demerara Waves.com, official figures show that Lindeners pay between $5 and $15 per kWh.
Tony Fiddy, President of the Waste to Energy Division and Regional Vice President for Europe and Africa, Naanovo Energy Inc., says a waste to energy plant in Guyana could lower the electricity costs tremendously.
“In St. Kitts we will be building a plant and selling power for US.20 cents to the government there, resulting in a huge savings that will be passed along to the consumer,” said Fiddy, a panelist on the forum organized by Felicia Persaud’s Hard Beat Communications and the CTO.
“We’d love to be in Guyana,” added the UK-based Fiddy, whose company will be building a plant in St. Kitts and son adding St. Lucia and Jamaica to the regional investments as well. “We may be able to create 40 mega watts of clean power and possibly create some 200 jobs.”
The forum also featured Loreto Duffy-Mayers, Project Manager for the Caribbean Hotel Energy Efficiency Action (CHENACT) Programme and Ujjwal Bhattacharjee, a specialist in renewable energy and energy efficiency with a focus on technology, investment and policy and a consultant on the CHENACT project. It was held from 8:30 to 10 a.m. at the Guyana International Conference Centre in Liliendaal, Guyana.
Persaud, who co-convened and moderated the forum, urged the 100 delegates to remember that”investing in clean energy is not just environmentally responsible, but good business.”
“No region offers more long-term growth prospects for renewable energy than the Caribbean,” said Persaud. “Last year, according to the UN Environment Program, investors pumped a record two hundred and 11 billion US dollars into renewables globally and this is projected to grow to 1.7 trillion by 2020. Of the 211 billion, $72 billion was invested in developing countries vs. $70 billion in developed economies. South and Central America secured $13.1 billion of that amount. The Caribbean was not accounted for in this study.
“And so it is a challenge to The Caribbean region to position itself to take advantage of this new sector sustainably and with transparency. Our leaders must begin to think outside the box and be unafraid to move beyond the traditional sectors – for instance out of a dying sugar industry, to ethanol,” she added.
“We must tap investment into this sector to create new jobs and limit our dependence on the up and down prices of oil and grow our economies like our south American neighbors and really make a mark on this generation.”
The Caribbean Tourism Organization has been staging its Annual Conference on Sustainable Tourism Development, otherwise known as the Sustainable Tourism Conference (STC), since 1997.
