The second Green Aruba conference recently came to a close, with a keynote speech from His Royal Highness, Prince Willem-Alexander:
“It is wonderful to see how a small country can sometimes be great,” His Royal Highness began, “to realize that no dream is unattainable, if you really believe in it…it is only recently that the Aruban government decided to go all out to become a leading regional player in free, sustainable energy.”
He mentioned the ambitious energy policy put forward at the first Green Energy Conference one year ago by PM Eman and Minister of Finance, Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, Mike de Meza, and, most importantly, it was well attended by official and important business people from all over the Caribbean. They “were inspired by your enthusiasm, vision and leadership. In short, Aruba made a fine start in the policy area, for there are few issues that combine so many topical developments as the question of how we will obtain our energy in say…2050.”
Read more about the Prince’s speech in this report from Aruba.com.
In addition:
[T]he Aruba Green Energy Conference 2011 – “The Green Gateway”- came to a close with the historic signing of the agreement between the Aruban Government and TNO (Netherlands Organization Applied Scientific Research), for the establishment of the Caribbean Sustainable Research Institute (CSRI) with TNO CEO Jan Mengelers.
See this CaribSeek article for more information about what the CSRI will be doing in Aruba:
TNO will begin offering Summer courses on a high academic level, and will be organizing seminars and conferences in Aruba. They will set up a center of education geared to students in the region offering technical education. Aruba will serve as a “living lab” where investigations will be conducted under ideal conditions which could be later exported to other markets.
They will also do testing and certifications here. This means that companies building apparatus for the energy market can have their products tested here quickly and efficiently to determine whether they comply with recognized standards.
