BASSETERRE St. Kitts – GOVERNMENT Ministers and stakeholders in both the public and private sectors from around the region recently met with the Inter-America Development Bank (IDB) to address the inseparable linkage between the fiscal crisis confronting the Caribbean and the reality of paying some of the world’s highest per capita energy costs.
The IDB-hosted energy conference, entitled “The Caribbean’s Energy Future: A Pathway to Regional Fiscal Stability”, was held in Washington, DC.
According to the IDB, the meeting which covered the ever-increasing cost of energy, placed enormous pressure on countries whose national budgets are often already heavily indebted.
In his opening address at the conference, IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno made a regional call to action whilst Dr. Ernest Moniz, the United States’ Secretary of Energy, conveyed his government’s support for a new Caribbean regional energy market.
The objectives of the event were to provide a forum to examine the issues associated with the region’s high energy costs and associated impacts, explore options for addressing this problem, and set forth a roadmap that would assist the Caribbean region in developing a cleaner, more cost effective, and sustainable energy matrix.
Senior-level public officials, key private-sector and multilateral agency decision-makers from throughout the Caribbean region and North America were engaged in discussions on a wide range of energy-focused topics, including:
? Examining the region’s energy flows and defining the level of alleviation that energy sector changes can bring to national budgets;
? Presenting results of pre-feasibility studies for the establishment of a natural gas market in the region;
? Discussing how advances in technologies related to natural gas, energy efficiency, and multiple renewable energy technologies help to diversify national and regional markets;
? Identifying ways to advance a new energy agenda through Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) and shared action by Caribbean states; and
? Defining the key “bankability” requirements for the multilateral financial institutions in order to finance potential PPP initiatives in the region.
One of the highlights of the event was a presentation made by Roberto Vellutini, the IDB’s Vice President for Countries.
His presentation focused on a new regional PPP energy financing mechanism, the release of a new pre-feasibility study on the energy matrices of most Caribbean states and another study on the potential market for natural gas as a fuel for power generation in the Caribbean.
