Cayman has room for full rollout of renewables
Cayman Islands
(CNS): The suggestion that Cayman doesn’t have room to accommodate enough solar panels or wind turbines to generate all of its power from renewables has been debunked in the government’s new draft National Energy Policy. The revised policy, which is even more ambitious than the last one, has a target of generating 100% of our power from green resources by 2050 and 30% by 2030. While it has been established that Cayman has the capacity to adapt to a greener future, it now needs to pick up the pace.
According to the draft NEP, in order to meet the 100% renewable energy target by 2050, the Cayman Islands will have to have solar panels on rooftops, car parks and old quarries in addition to utility-sized solar farms and also review the exclusion zones to develop wind farms.
CUC is currently buying energy from just one utility solar farm in Bodden Town, which generates just 5MW of electricity. The project, built by Entropy Cayman Solar Ltd, was plagued with problems and sold in 2019. Since then, CUC has begun work on a battery installation and last year OfReg began a procurement exercise for a 23MW plant, but there has been no update on the progress of that bid.
The rest of the power generated across Grand Cayman comes from the handful of property owners who are completely off the grid and generating their own energy through domestic-scale renewables or from those on the CORE and DER feedback programmes
Both OfReg and CUC have been blamed by those in the green energy sector for stalling the development of alternative sources of energy, and they believe a radical overhaul is needed to begin the rollout of renewables in earnest.
The revised policy, which was published this week, sets out what needs to be done to help Cayman create a greener future. But it is clear that a great deal of investment will be necessary to give shape to the policy, and there are no mandatory requirements for developers. Instead, the policy depends on encouragement and the goodwill of those with the power and the purse strings. It also relies on the development of better alternative energy technologies and a drop in prices as the sector evolves.
According to the authors of the report, previous analyses had suggested possible limitations in the availability of attainable acreage for renewable energy generation development, but that has been dismissed. The policy sets out how the country can make the most of both its year-round sunshine and strong winds.
“Careful assessment of available lands, including landfills and mined-out quarries, as well as available rooftops and parking lots, has yielded a sufficiency of sites conducive to the development of utility-scale and DG opportunities,” the draft policy has found.
It also noted that government would need to revise the airport exclusion zone restrictions to accommodate wind energy facilities on Grand Cayman and outlines how Doppler and airport radar stations can coexist with utility-scale wind energy facilities.
When the report was undertaken in 2021, only 3% of power was generated from renewables here. While that number has increased slightly over the last 18 months, less than 8% of Grand Cayman’s capacity is generated by green resources. But with CUC’s continued customer growth as the population increases, the amount of diesel being burned is actually growing.
In his introduction to the draft policy, Premier Wayne Panton, who is the minister for sustainability, said that for future generations to thrive, the Cayman Islands must shift away from its reliance on expensive, volatile and polluting fossil fuels to affordable, reliable and clean renewable energy.
“In light of the recently released Climate Change Risk Assessment for the Cayman Islands, this policy update includes new policies for energy resiliency to protect against storms, electric vehicles and energy storage, all of which support greenhouse gas emission reductions,” the premier wrote. “The updated policy acknowledges that sustainable development requires a greater emphasis on social equity to promote energy access and professional opportunities for all Caymanians.”
Despite this emphasis on equity, the policy says nothing about public ownership of renewables, which Panton proposed in April last year. In his keynote address at the Caribbean Renewable Energy Forum, he said his government would seek to take control of Cayman’s future green energy resources through majority ownership of any new solar or other renewable energy facilities.
Panton has continued to make his commitment to renewable energy clear. He stated again in the introduction to the NEP that Cayman cannot turn the tide against global warming but has a responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the use of environmentally-friendly sources of energy.
“Advancing our renewable energy goals will also help protect our islands from the volatility of traditional fuels and the external shocks of international markets,” he said.
“The vision of the policy, ‘Enhancing and embracing a sustainable lifestyle through responsible,
affordable, and innovative energy supply and consumption’, speaks to our collective aspiration for a
Cayman Islands that is held up as one of the most sustainable countries in the world, a trio of islands
where all its citizens can thrive; a peaceful and prosperous place known for its resourcefulness, its
diligence, its excellence, and its innovativeness.”
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