Owen Gunning, president of the Jamaica Society of Energy Engineers, has said that the Jamaica Public Service Company (the country’s sole distributor of electricity) is not doing enough to make the necessary transition to alternative energy:
THE country cannot continue to depend on oil if the island intends to make meaningful progress with its economy, a leading energy engineer has said.
Certified energy manager and energy auditor, Owen Gunning, who is also president of the Jamaica Society of Energy Engineers, wants a full-scale effort to be made to reduce Jamaica’s dependence on oil as its base fuel and insists that a ‘more action, less talk’ approach should be adopted.
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“How long can we stay on oil? As long as we want, but everything will be closed down and prices will go through the roof,” Gunning told Jamaica Observer journalists at yesterday’s Monday Exchange held at the newspaper’s Beechwood Avenue headquarters in Kingston.
Highlighting the need for Jamaica to go full speed ahead in embracing alternative sources of energy, Gunning said that the cost of producing electricity from oil in Jamaica was like a millstone around the neck of production.
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The real solution, the energy specialist said, lies with the introduction of renewable sources of energy, particularly solar energy.
“We spend US$2.5 billion on fuel per year. Twenty per cent of that is $500m, what we should be trying to do now is put up two (solar) plants for US$500m.
“If you encourage persons to invest in solar and alternative energy, it’s like a national savings. People are actually taking their own money and investing in solar.
“If you can convince people you would not be looking now to find US$600 million to buy a (new Jamaica Public Service Company) plant. But you have to replace the old plants because they are 40 years old and over and the conversion of fuel to energy is crazy.
“You really have to change the fuel. We might even have to look at a clean coal. For a small country like ours you might not want to go too much into the coal, because of the environmental situation, but you do have clean coal technology. It’s more expensive of course, but it’s cheaper than continuing with the present system.”
Gunning said that it was time for action on alternative energy solutions, adding that there was already too much talk in Jamaica.
Read more in the full article from the Jamaica Observer.
