Barbados PM Wants More Caribbean Cooperation in Transitioning to Green Energy

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley Tuesday urged Caribbean countries to work towards cooperating more so as to achieve energy transition in the region.

Barbados Prime Minister Mottley (left) and IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva, on discussions during the forum (CMC Photo)Mottley said quite frankly, while none of us individually may be able to sustain attention, “we have an obligation to recognize that if we were to pool the investment, that we would be in a better position to be able to command the investment and the technology necessary to be able to allow the region to do a serious transition”.

Addressing the opening of the three-day Caribbean High-Level Forum on managing the energy transition that she has asked the International  Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World  Bank to take the lead in being able to do an audit of the renewable energy capacity of the region “because we first must know what we have, if we are to know what are the possibilities of action with what we have”.

Mottley said that the Caribbean is faced with complex challenges, noting for example that when countries can be hit by Hurricane Beryl at the beginning of the season, and then continue, as was the case with Grenada, to be hit again as recently as two weeks ago with the floods that were unexpected.

“You begin to understand that the capacity to plan is really being threatened, and that our snapshot frame for how we plan may not necessarily be able to remain as it was in terms of annual reviews, but that we now live in a world which truly has become instantaneous in almost every respect. “

She said what is required is restructuring every thing being done and without energy, the capacity for economic growth will simply not be there.

“Without energy, the capacity for citizen security will be compromised, and next week, we meet with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to be able to address this most nexus issue of citizen security.

“So it is not a throwing comment on my part. But what is the reality of energy transition in the region. And what is the reality of energy transition in the region? Environmentally, there are issues at the regulatory level.”

“…quite frankly, if you have limited experience because of limited options with respect to how often people come before you, then you are unlikely to be able to develop the experience in as quick a time as we need to be able to manage a transition.”

She told the forum, which is a joint initiative of the Barbados government and the IMF, that  while Caribbean countries  are signatories to the revised Treaty of Chaguaramas that has  within it the premise of functional cooperation, “and yet on this most difficult and complex issue of regulation of energy and energy, we have limited or no cooperation.

“We ourselves in Barbados have been struggling over the course of the last four years with a regulatory framework that has not necessarily met the needs of the country,” she said, noting that in fact, “it has compromised, in some instances, our ability to reach safely on our goal of net zero by 2035.

“ I strongly believe, as I said in the past and I think I said it on the last occasion…that the region needs to step up to the plate on the complex issues of regulation, ensuring that the limited capacity that we have can be utilized to the maximum with respect to the benefit of all countries. “

She said apart from regulation, there is the issue of procurement with almost every country literally, will face the reality that their orders are too small, including Guyana, who is the fastest growing country in the world, and deservedly so at this stage.

“But the reality is that our orders are simply too small to command attention. And yet the simple task of pooled procurement seems to elude us, in spite of the fact that during COVID we have the example of the African Medical Supplies Platform that made available to us in the region, at a critical time, the opportunity to be able to pool our procurement.”

She said that such cooperation led to the region having the financing availableto the point that  a country as small as St. Kitts-Nevis with 38,000 people could command prices, or have access to prices that a country like Nigeria with over 200 and whatever million were able to access.

“That is purely through a legal agreement and the political will so to create. We need to have more pooled procurement. “

Mottley said there was also the issued of investment.

“Many of us are talking about different opportunities. Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts and Nevis, and I suspect St. Lucia too, all have the opportunity for geothermal. They’ve been struggling with being able to bring these investments to reality for a very long period of time.

“In Guyana and Suriname, you have the opportunity for hydroelectric, among other things. We’ve been struggling to bring these investments to fruition for a very long time. In Barbados and Grenada and along the other islands, we have the capacity not just for Jamaica for solar, but for wind. We’ve been struggling to bring these to fruition for some time.”

Mottley, an attorney, says the facts speak for themselves and if ever there was a time for pooled investment, it is in the area of renewable energy.

“ And it is at a time when the world has become consumed with how it will access clean energy,” she said, adding that the reality shows how critical these issues are to the geopolitics of the world, to have them resolved.

“And quite frankly, while none of us individually may be able to sustain attention, and I acknowledge that Guyana and Suriname have the best opportunities as they do on the continent to sustain that kind of attention, but even they will be compromised.

“We have an obligation to recognize that if we were to pool the investment, that we would be in a better position to be able to command the investment and the technology necessary to be able to allow the region to do a serious transition.

“And what does it mean? It means, quite simply, that instead of meeting a few times a year and talking about other matters, that we also add now to the scope of the revised Treaty of Chaguaramas the issue of energy, and in particular renewable energy”.

“And I truly believe that if we, over the course of the next few months, can do that, then we can begin to see the possibility of real change and transformation in this region, as well as protecting ourselves and building the resilience necessary to come through the climate crisis successfully.”

Mottley says she hopes the forum can, in some small way, stimulate the interest among individual countries, first, the cooperation, and then, two, to recognize that “we are always stronger when we move together.

“And in this world, where smallness is not to be, how to put it, smallness will give us agility, but in this world, where the rules of the international order are being questioned in many respects, then, more than ever, we need solidarity and we need common action with common purpose,”  she added.