Consultations on the new draft Electricity Supply Act are expected to begin within a few weeks.
This disclosure came today from Minister of Energy and Business, Senator Lisa Cummins, as she delivered the feature address at the opening of the two-day Energy Transition and Investment Plan Stakeholder Workshop, at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre.
Senator Cummins told those in the energy sector that the draft legislation had been completed last November. “We’ve done quite a bit of work and in the coming months … you will hear about an updated IRRP (Integration Resource and Resiliency Plan) …, the commencement of consultations for the purpose of developing a brand new Electricity Supply Act. That draft is currently with the Chief Parliamentary Counsel…. We expect that within, hopefully, another few weeks, we will be in a position to begin consultations….
“We have commenced work on an onshore wind project for 30 megawatts of power, and we are also aiming to have discussions around offshore wind as well. So, there’s quite a bit happening,” she shared.
The Minister opined that this was the time for stakeholders to step up their game and begin the process of investing in the energy transition and energy future, which must encompass people. In addition to updating the Barbados National Energy Plan, she noted that officials were seeking to overlay it with the investment plan.
“It’s fine to talk about what we want to accomplish in terms of our development goals and our development trajectory…. What will it cost us to get to 2030? What will be the sources of capital? In what types of energy will we be investing? We already have an extensive solar PV network; we are expanding that and expanding the mix. We didn’t have hydrogen for example, in our IRRP in 2021, … we’re including it now….
“Weare setting ourselves a target for 2030. What that means is that there can be no time for us to lag. We have to make critical decisions and we have to make critical decisions now, and I’m calling on every last one of you in this room to be committed to making difficult decisions at this point,” she stated.
Indicating that there was a “heavy lifting road ahead”, Senator Cummins said it was necessary for all the stakeholders in energy to work together, even though they would not always agree on some things.
She stated that requests were received regularly for additional time to complete projects. However, she noted that many decisions had to be made now.
“We’re at the back of the queue, in many instances, for a lot of the decisions that we have to make. The rest of the world is not sitting and waiting for any of our agencies to go through academic exercises…. The global supply chain is looking for the first to market, the first to get to procurement, the first to spend money and they are not necessarily interested in what our philosophy is,” she surmised.
Senator Cummins noted that the process of positioning the Barbados National Oil Company Limited and the National Petroleum Corporation from exclusive dependence on oil and gas to a renewable future had started.
The meeting is being hosted by the Ministry of Energy and Business, in collaboration with Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL).