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Contact:
John Emmanuel
Tuesday, May 20, 2003 - As the debate continues over the need to explore
alternative sources of power generation on the island, the issue of
environmental protection has been underscored again as one of the main factors
for a change from fossil to diesel fuels.
The latest admonition has come from Dr. Bill Ritchie – Managing Director of the
United Kingdom based PB Power. Dr. Ritchie, who was on island as part of the St.
Lucia Electricity Services Limited (LUCELEC) 2003 ‘Energy in Motion Series’ that
ended on Sunday, May 18th, 2003. Dr. Ritchie told his audience who consisted of
a wide cross-section of stakeholders involved in energy generation, that with
terrorist activity increasing worldwide, huge oil laden tankers passing through
the Caribbean waters provided an easy target. Any such attack or an incident in
which a tanker runs aground and spills its oil could cripple the tourism
industry which has become a mainstay for many Caribbean islands.
Such a scenario, Dr. Ritchie stated, coupled with the need to be more cost
effective, was a powerful incentive for change. “If there is a disaster and I
know we all get more focused on disasters these days with terrorism much more to
the front of everybody’s mind, this could spell disaster. If this part of the
world has a disaster and there is heavy fuel floating about on the beaches of
the Caribbean, then that would have a greater impact on the demand forecast than
almost anything else because your economies are dependent on tourists and some
oil floating on the beaches could have a crippling effect on your livelihoods.”
The renowned expert with over two decades of experience in the field of power
generation echoed sentiments expressed here in the past that St. Lucia’s most
likely alternative for electricity generation was wind power. Meanwhile Public
Utilities Minister Honourable Felix Finisterre has called for more constructive
dialogue in the debate over electricity generation needs versus environmental
protection.
Finisterre said, “The ensuring debate therefore has not been helped at all by
the seeming antagonisms as if it were two sides of a continuum. On one side we
have the energy conservationists saying that they believe that X or Y can be
done, by 15 and 20%, some of those figures being quite gratuitous whereby we can
replace fossil fuels by year X,Y or Z. I believe that the time has now come for
us to buckle down, do the relevant research and analyse the figures along with
LUCELEC so that we can move forward.”
LUCELEC officials say the company has begun looking seriously at the prospect of
wind power generation with two sites being examined for possible wind farms.
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