Barbados Pleased With Response to Renewable Energy Initiative

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados –The Barbados government says it has signed off on 39 license applications for individuals and companies interested in pursuing renewable energy business ventures in the island’s quest to be100 per cent fossil fuel free by 2030.

Kerrie SymmondsEnergy, Small Business and Entrepreneurship Minister, Kerrie Symmonds, told Barbados Workers Union’s 79th Annual Delegates’ Conference that in just over a month, he had concluded 110 license approvals and that the sector represented a “new vista of economic opportunities in this country and for skills training.

“It is a new vista for skills training and skills development. Because we are ahead in the Eastern Caribbean in renewable energy, it is an opportunity for our workers to be ahead by way of selling their skills and their services in the Eastern Caribbean and who will ultimately be walking this road very shortly,” he told the conference.

Symmonds said Barbados has to avoid past mistakes of history by not allowing workers to be “left on the wayside watching” and the energy sector should be seen as an opportunity for average Barbadians to be independent power producers.

He said that the union’s general secretary Toni Moore had submitted a proposal for a solar voltaic farm at Mangrove St. Philip, east of here, to make the 80-year-old institution energy self-sufficient.

“And therefore we feel that we have to go to a renewable energy platform. The Barbados Workers Union’s land at Mangrove…will be ideal for the development of a solar photovoltaic farm and through the Barbados National Oil Company have reached an agreement in principle that a partnership can take place”.

The Energy Minister said it would provide for the “union to future proof itself financially so that you will be able to sell energy into the grid and earn the right to take care of your costs and ensure that you are independent financially for as long as you can exist”.