Keith Ripley is a rare find: an expert who can actually communicate his knowledge and ideas in a manner that is easily understood by non-technical people in leadership and the general population.
A Balanced, Easily Understood Critique Of Barbados’ Draft National Energy Plan
The Temas Blog has published an excellent summary and analysis of the recently presented Barbados Draft National Energy Plan. We urge all our readers to head over to Keith Ripley’s blog and take the time to read his report.
And for our BFP readers who are elected or appointed government officials, that advice goes double.
The world is in big trouble with energy and the environmental trade offs that were made in the last 50 years, but in some respects Barbados is much more fortunate than countries further north. As UWI’s Professor Oliver Headley said many times and in many different ways “The sun will still shine when the oil runs out.”
Here is an excerpt from Keith Ripley’s report, taken almost at random…
The draft Energy Plan hits all the right environmental notes and themes that international institutions, lenders and investors applaud these days — market liberalization, source diversification, GHG cuts, energy conservation, energy efficiency, biofuels and other renewable sources, fuel efficiency and emission standards for vehicles, etc. Probably it should be praised for at least being mindful of such things — lord knows I have read many energy plans in LAC that ignored the environmental impacts of their proposals.
Perhaps too many “smooth” and “sounds good” notes: there is too little feel of the tough trade-offs such policies usually entail, of calculating cost-benefits, of considering where the different items on the laundry list of policy measures might work at cross-purposes or even undermine one another. No firm sense of priority-setting, and everything is spoken of in terms of near- (2010) or long- (2026) term — nothing in the medium-term, as if it does not exist and transitions will take care of themselves.
The paucity of current, hard data in the Plan certainly does not inspire confidence…
… read the entire report at The Temas Blog: A Sustainable Energy Plan For Barbados?
10 Comments
February 28, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Ah, so you found it! Those Google alerts really do work! LOL
Thanks for the very kind words about the article. There may be holes or mistakes in my analysis, and if so, I am sure it’ll be the readers of BFP that find them! I just hope they’ll not be shy about posting comments on The Temas Blog . I value feedback and discussion, it’s the only way we all learn and grow. Even Kelly and Rufus can comment, as long as they keep it civil and substantive!
I still would love a guest blog from the BFP’ers at The Temas Blog on an environment, health or consumer protection issue, so I repeat the invitation. You guys know my email address.
I also still intend to do a short piece on your landfill controversy (aside: anybody here read my piece about touring the landfill in Rio?), just haven’t had an opportunity to do it yet. My current backlog in the blog queue is considerable… Never seems to be enough hours in a day for my “one-man show” blogging in his spare time about over 30 countries…
Warm Regards,
Keith
******************
Comment by Marcus
Hi Keith
You are so right about the backlog. We all wish there was some way we could blog full time, but reality and night shifts say otherwise.
Good to see you.
Marcus
March 1, 2007 at 4:00 am
I have dutifully read the whole report and it makes impressive reading. Keith’s main point is that it all sounds great, but is it realistic? Having a pie chart at the heading of your post is quite appropriate as the whole report is Pie in the Sky, words which sound the right notes, but can be no more than 10% implemented within the time frames indicated.
Certain key facts impressed me:
1. The largest user of imported oil products is Barbados Light and Power (BL&P not BP&L, Keith, that is Miami).
2. The largest user of electricity is B’dos Water Authority.
3. Barbados’ small size presents ideal circumstances for mass transit solutions because the mass of the population is on a strip north and south of Bridgetown. The report points out that Gov’t does not address this opportunity creatively.
In any such bulky Plan where limited expertise and resources make it totally impracticable to implement in its entirety, the best thing to do is concentrate on a few attainable goals which will have the best result.
The answers ring out loud and clear for me.
1. Switch as much of BLP’s power generation to natural gas as possible.
2. Convert BWA’s heavy electricity usage to natural gas powered pumps.
3. Convert all buses and ZR vehicles to compressed natural gas by generous tax/levy incentives etc. as soon as possible.
Those three steps alone will probably reduce Barbados’ Carbon Footprint more than all the other ambitious scattered intentions put together. They are also straighforward enough to be achieved once there is an assured source of natural gas.
There is an obvious case for compressed natural gas powered trams running along the coast from Oistins to Holetown, passing through Bridgetown east of the centre. If efficiently and economically run they should reduce commuter traffic substantially, reducing the pollution of all those SUVs creeping along bumper to bumper.
Enabling houseowners to generate their own electricity into the grid should also not be hard. I would love to have solar voltaic cells on my roof, reducing the heat load on the roof besides producing power. The main obstacle to this seems to be the conservatism of BL&P who want to keep their monopoly, naturally.
I also love windfarms, and feel Barbados, with its history of windmills, must be a natural for it. We have seen how the good folk at the proposed site are up in arms against it. Good old stick-in-the-mud Bajans! Saying the noise might keep them awake at night is understandable but fatuous. Like the thousands of homeowners between Enterprise and the airport asking for the airport to be relocated because of the noise of landing aircraft- which is loud indeed.
One problem not addressed in the Report is the wasted fuel and increased pollution caused by parents taking their children to and from schools outside the area where they live. This must surely contribute about 30% to the fuel bill of every family which does this daily trek.
This involves changing the “first choice” system we love so dearly, and I can’t imagine it being changed.
I shall be interested to see what other bloggers feel about the Sustainable Energy Plan.
March 1, 2007 at 4:47 am
Greengage, thanks for the very insightful comments. You said it better than I, and with more economy of words! Wish you would have not been shy about leaving them (too) on The Temas Blog, but happy to have some feedback regardless of venue.
If the worse you could find in my article was the transposition of two letters in most (but not all! I at least got it right the first time I mentioned the acronym! LOL) of the times BL&P was mentioned, then I’m happy. BTW, many thanks for pointing out the error; I just corrected it.
Best Regards,
Keith
March 1, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Barbados should have already had many wind-farms in place operating, this last 20 years or more.
Two trial windmills were erected, one at the btm. of Shop Hill,
and another out in Sin Lucy,somewhere.
We should have HUNDREDS of these spinners all along our East Coast, but oh..how they would ugly-up de place!
Got news for you.
Barbados done ugly-up already!
My house is an eyesore, as is your house,
and so too every human-created bldg./structure that God or Nature did not put there,okay?
The whole of Bridgetown and all its bldgs. IS UGLY, but is necessary for humans to live here,
so enough with the idealism: we need serious amounts of energy to carry on, and we got wind brekkin we down, for about two-thirds of the year – all that energy, passing us by.
Time to HARNESS IT, for it is free!
Time to get wid de program, forget all the cute aesthetics, and get spinners spinning,
and photo-voltaic cells up on my roof, right next to the equally-ugly solar water heater, that no-one even sees any more!
We wait on the Trinis to get the natural-gas ‘energy-straw’ (pipeline) to us,
so we can start sucking on it HARD.
That could take some time, coz waters twixt us and them and many thousands of ft. deep
and that pipeline is not coming any time soon, despite political promises telling us how good it’ll be when it happens, if it happens.
March 1, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Alternatives- Re wind turbines being ugly. While they are an intrusion on the previously unspoiled view, in themselves I find them quite aesthetic. Slender, streamlined, modern-looking and efficient. Are they so much worse than the windmills that we have grown to love as part of our rich heritage? It has hurt me to those relics of false starts standing idle in the North of the island for so long.
Couple of years back I was astounded to see a windfarm in the middle of the Rajasthan Desert with a ancient burial mausoleums in the foreground. I photographed it as a symbol of the ancient and modern of our world mixed together.
Remember when that immense satellite dish of Cable & Wireless was out on the East Coast? It was discordant in those rural surroundings, but we got used to it quickly, even pointed it out proudly to sightseeing visitors.
Having sailed blue waters with a wind generator keeping the batteries charged, I would like one spinning on my roof (until I get the photovoltaic panels) to show that I am waving the flag for renewable energy.
P.S. For Keith- I am not so much shy as lazy. Will try to copy/paste on your site but I did not draft on MsnWord or Notepad. Too long to retype. Cheers.
March 2, 2007 at 6:02 am
greengage
interesting perspective to the use of natural gas but do you have the figures for our known reserves and our probable use if we all converted?
More importantly how would you deal with the vested interests such as Kyffen’s company and BL&P and BWA when government is so easily bought off for the short term?
March 2, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Reality Check, I mentioned in the article that at current consumption rates (with only 2.5% of power generation involving natural gas), Barbados’ own known reserves would only last about 15 years, after which time you’d be dependent on gas from Trinidad — unless of course the offshore prospecting for oil finds new gas reserves. If Barbados were to convert to 70% power generation from natural gas as the Plan calls for, and then also switch major transport uses to natural gas as well, I imagine your own reserves would run out rather quickly. How quickly is hard to say, as the Plan does not provide projections for that — in fact, as I noted in the article, it provides amazingly little data (and much of what it provides is outdated and incomplete) for a major national planning document.
Regards,
Keith
March 2, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Reality Check- Re Bim’s gas reserves, I knew of the figure of 15 years from present sources from Keith’s report, and was counting on a supply from T&T by tanker if the pipeline won’t work. If they won’t sell us, some other country will. There is also a good chance we may have offshore gas, even if oil seems unlikely. If we have to import a fuel, we may as well opt for the one that is ecologically least harmful- GAS.
Once Government decides on an energy policy based on gas, they should stick to it, regardless of local commercial objections. Where there’s a will there’s a way.
All the other options, wind farm, photovoltaic etc. are peripheral supports but can’t take the main strain, and can’t help vehicles (yet).
I was amazed to find that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania only use gasoline to start their cars. A computer automatically switches over to LPG or CNG which is available in 90% of gas stations. This is not new. It was started by the Soviet Union 20 years ago, but Western oil companies aren’t going to talk about that, are they? The conversion kits are readily available from the Dutch or Italian manufacturers.
Sadly we may be too conservative by nature as a nation to have the commitment or resolve to deviate from the polluting path along which we plod.
March 2, 2007 at 7:07 pm
i do not know what the hold up is, we can produce ethanol here as brazil does , this can be used to fuel cars by mixing with gasoline (gasohol). higher octane, cleaner burning, cooler burning, reduced exhaust emissions, better for the environment, i cannot understand the hold up, ah yes , gas stations will sell less gas if we go the gasohol route, we wouldn’t want to offend esso, (texaco BS&t), (shell sol). we do not need to build a $200 million factory to do this (someone wants to get richer). if the goverment was serious they could approach the three alcohol distilleries and come to an agreement for producing ethanol for fuel comsumption, it should save the country some foreign exchange (that is if they would be willing to subsidise).
March 30, 2007 at 10:39 pm
What in the name of Jerry Brightonhammer was that all about?
I dont’ know but it doesn’t make sense to me.