Renewable Energy Can Free the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

CAPE ELEUTHERA: It was a truly shocking experience.

Who would have thought that the head cheeses of the Bahamas Electricity Corporation, Kevin Basden and Fred Gottlieb, would be caught dead at a little out island gabfest on renewable energy?

"I really hope we can get renewables working for us," BEC chairman Gottlieb told the assembled experts and afficionados, "because I am tired of people calling me to complain about the fuel surcharge."

With oil prices now hovering around $100 a barrel, the world's heavily-polluting energy economy is finally beginning to shift gear, and the Bahamas - which imports all its fuel - must adapt or suffer the consequences. The good news is that the economic changes the experts were predicting for the long haul are happening a lot faster than we expected.

The setting for Mr Gottlieb's joke last week is a clear case in point. An American-owned school at Cape Eleuthera that is powered entirely by solar panels and a wind turbine, that recycles its own waste, grows its own food and builds with Casuarina lumber (these imported pine trees are an invasive weed).

And what, just a couple of years ago, might have been merely a gathering of starry-eyed green missionaries turned out to be more of a business meeting than you might think.

"We want to create a cutting-edge model that delivers real-world success in sustainable design," said Jack Kenworthy, one of the conference organisers. "We want to galvanise government support, identify funding, planners and stakeholders, and decide on next steps over the coming year. At stake is our quality of life in terms of whether the Bahamas can afford to keep its economy running."

In addition to the BEC chiefs, public sector participants at the Freedom 2030 conference included the minister for utilities, Phenton Neymour; the minister for agriculture and marine resources, Larry Cartwright; both recent electoral candidates for South Eleuthera, Oswald Ingraham and Johnley Ferguson; as well as local government and tourism officials; and a couple of bigwigs from the Inter-American Development Bank.

The private sector was represented by Eric Carey of the National Trust; Ginny McKinney of Waste Not Ltd; Stuart Ray of the Lyford Cay Foundation; Jennifer Edwards of the Hotel Association; Paul Thompson of the Windermere resort on Eleuthera; Keith Bishop of Islands by Design, architect Mike Alexiou; Kevon Mackell of Bermuda Electric Light Co; Petagay Hartman of the Tiamo resort on Andros; realtor/developer Colin Lightbourn and Doug Cotton of the Boston planning firm, Haley & Aldrich.

Cape Eleuthera Resort has existed on this remote peninsula in one form or another for over 40 years, and bills itself today as the largest marina in the out islands. Originally a small mangrove creek a mile or three from the tiny settlement of Deep Creek (population 700), it is now owned by the DeVos family of Michigan, founders of the multi-billion-dollar Amway Corporation.

Chris Maxey, a US Navy Seal turned teacher from New Jersey who had been visiting Eleuthera since his parents built a home at Cotton Bay years ago, was able to get the DeVos family to hand over a few of their 4,500 acres at the Cape for a small educational field station.

Maxey used his island connections to set up a campus near Deep Creek about a decade ago. And the Island School now draws students from hundreds of North American and Bahamian high schools, who pay big bucks to spend a semester roughing it while learning about the environment and history of Eleuthera.

Maxey went on to leverage his wealthy friends (and their friends) to create something called the Cape Eleuthera Institute, which works along with the school on sustainable living technologies that can be applied to local resorts and communities. The Institute set up shop two years ago and hosted last week's unprecedented renewable energy event.

The word 'unprecedented' is no exaggeration. Minister Neymour said a national energy council would be appointed "within a few weeks", IDB director Jerry Butler offered grants and financing for renewable energy projects, Chairman Gottlieb revealed that a high-level committee at BEC was already working on alternative energy options, and the Cape Eleuthera Institute is proposing a one megawatt solar power plant tied to BEC's Rock Sound facility.

In fact, the Institute set up the first grid-connected photovoltaic power system in The Bahamas a year or so ago. Rooftop solar panels produce 30 kilowatts of electricity, enough to power the campus with the excess provided to BEC for the people of Deep Creek. The idea is to expand this initial incursion into BEC's grid with a $4 million solar facility at Rock Sound built to withstand a category 5 hurricane.

The Institute is seeking to convince manufacturers of large-scale photovoltaic plants to take a risk on a much smaller facility here in the interest of opening doors to future business. BEC sells electricity on Eleuthera for 32 cents per kilowatt (including the surcharge), although the real cost is believed to be higher. A one megawatt solar plant could sell power to BEC for about 28 cents a kilowatt, according to Mr Kenworthy, CEO at the Institute.

BEC currently produces some 45,000 megawatt hours a year on Eleuthera. It currently costs $8 million a year to buy the fuel to produce this electricity, which pollutes the atmosphere when it is burned, and that cost is expected to grow by at least 10 per cent a year. Using technology that is available right now, a solar panel farm big enough to feed that demand would occupy about one tenth of one per cent of Eleuthera's 484 square kilometers of land, for an investment of about $330 million. A smaller solar farm could be supplemented by a few giant wind turbines.

With gasoline imports approaching prohibitive prices, transportation fuel is another big issue for the Bahamas. And as has been well-publicised recently, the Institute produces all the fuel for its fleet of diesel vans from discarded cooking oil retrieved from cruise ships that stop at a nearby shore facility. A deal was recently cut with Bahamas Waste Ltd to produce a million gallons of biodiesel a year - about half of Eleuthera's annual fuel requirement.

Marco Watson, a Bahamian who supervises the biodiesel processing, is convinced the government should invest in renewables to make the country truly independent. "We have to make that change now so our children don't have to worry about tomorrow. Now is the time to invest," he told conference attendees during a tour of the Institute.

It was a theme echoed by Jerry Butler, a Bahamian who has sat on the board of the IDB in Washington DC for the past four years. The bank has billions to lend, along with $25 million in grant funds for energy and climate change projects in the region.

"There is no country more vulnerable to climate change than the Bahamas," he said. "And the next election has to be fought over which leaders are more environmentally conscious and more concerned about energy security."

As much as price, nailing down a reliable energy supply is a key factor driving the government's new receptivity to renewable energy options. "BEC knows that oil will continue to rise in price and become more difficult to get," Mr Gottlieb acknowledged. "We are doing everything we can both internally and in conjunction with others to make the Bahamas as energy independent as possible."

Backing him in that view was Minister Neymour: "If we don't address these issues now we will pay for it later." His colleague, Larry Cartwright, told Tough Call that the cabinet had "no choice" but to embrace renewable energy solutions.

The Cape Eleuthera Institute is building relationships and conducting research with a view to developing sustainable industries in South Eleuthera, The Bahamas, and the Caribbean. And from the sound of it, things do seem to be moving ahead.

The proposed national energy council - something this column has been calling for - will develop a regulatory framework to promote renewables; the Ministry of Works is reviewing the use of biofuels, and BEC is exploring utility-scale generating systems and financing options.

One of the biggest drawbacks for policy makers is the fact that oil imports currently provide a big percentage of the country's tax revenue. We will have to come up with some creative ways to get around that, but business as usual is not an option any more.

The bottom line is that renewables are now cost-effective, a fact which is converging with rising concerns about climate change and security of supply to create the right environment for a take-off. For example, representatives of Bermuda's electric utility were at the conference talking about their "sustainable cottage" technology that integrates solar water heaters, photovoltaic panels and windmills into homes that will be tied to the national grid.

"We are here to talk about what might be," Mr Kenworthy told participants. "There is a bottom line, so we need win-win situations. But we can do well by doing good. The Bahamas is blessed with real opportunities to create economic changes that will also benefit the environment."

To set about making these changes, the Institute will conduct a comprehensive study of Eleuthera over the next nine months to produce a report with clear action plans and measurable benchmarks for creating a totally unique self-sufficient island in The Bahamas. The study will rely on experts from the Institute and government agencies, as well as outside consultants.

"There is a tremendous opportunity here to do something never done before," Mr Kenworthy said. "The Bahamas can and should be a model for the world proving that a small island nation can be self-sufficient. This is both an economic and national security issue that will set Eleuthera and The Bahamas as a leader in the inevitable shift away from dependence on fossil fuels."

Comments

[drew Roberts]

["I really hope we can get renewables working for us," BEC chairman Gottlieb told the assembled experts and afficionados, "because I am tired of people calling me to complain about the fuel surcharge."]

And here we see one of my big problems with them slip out.

I want it to work for the people of the Bahamas even if it means BEC shrinks and fades away into the sunset.

OFF GRID can work for the people but will perhaps not be so great for BEC.

The government needs to put the needs of the people ahead of the needs of its corporation.

all the best,

drew

[Tim Roberts]

This is an initiative that is long overdue. The Bahamas is an environmental treasure we have done pretty much nothing to preserve it.

On the GOOD NEWS front, I have caught wind of something that should prove extremely beneficial to all concerned. Dollar per Watt Solar energy (this makes solar now cheaper than coal)is now available.

A company called NanoSolar (http://www.nanosolar.com/index.html) has developed flexible panel solar cells that can be produced far cheaper than the previously high priced solar panels ($10 per watt).

It is something to look into. I have wished to be off the grid since my house was built, and am now looking to seriously reduce what I do have ON grid.

[larry smith]

These remarkably designed flexible solar cells were named top innovation of 2007 by Popular Science magazine: "Nanosolar has created an ink that takes sunlight and converts it into electricity. The ink is coated onto metal sheets as thin as aluminum foil with a printing-press-like device. The sheets are lighter,inexpensive and as efficient as traditional solar panels. The editors of PopSci believe that eventually every commercial rooftop could be carpeted with PowerSheet solar cells."

According to Jack Kenworthy of the Cape Eleuthera Institute, this product is "real and serious. These are the game changers that will make the cost of solar drop through the floor.

"They are not at $1/watt yet, but they should approach it. You have the same issues with high levels of penetration vis-à-vis storage and intermittancy, but the cost of the production is cut by an order of magnitude.

"This product will not be available at scale in a place like The Bahamas for many years due to the massive presales they have had. The next 5 years will be immensely interesting."

[John Dunagan]

Let's hope that the Bahamian government and industry will have the wisdom to follow the lead of these young pioneers.