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Government departments and institutions accounted for up to $11 billion, or approximately $880 million monthly, in electricity costs last year – nearly 15 per cent of the total amount of electricity consumed annually in Jamaica.
Prime Minister Bruce Golding and Energy and Mining Minister James Robertson, who disclosed this information during a workshop staged last Thursday at the Knutsford Court Hotel in New Kingston, cited government agencies and departments, as well as public schools and hospitals, among the primary consumers.
Oil accounts for nearly 40 per cent of the country’s total import bill.
Golding said Jamaica, which has one of the world’s highest energy-intensive ratings, was also one of the most inefficient users of electricity.
“We use 20,000 BTUs (British thermal units) to produce one US dollar of output of value. The global average is less than quarter of that.
“We waste energy, and Jamaica’s economic future cannot be secured unless we address this problem in a fundamental way,” the prime minister lamented.
Golding said the Government, through the energy and mining ministry, had developed four significant platforms – the national energy, national renewable energy, national energy from waste as well as the energy conservation and efficiency policies – to address the issue.
However, the prime minister acknowledged that Jamaica experienced several challenges to fulfilling some objectives in the national energy policy, which called for increasing the mix of renewable energy sources.
“Right now, we’re somewhere near five per cent, and the policy requires we get up to 10 per cent by 2015 and 20 per cent by 2030. That’s ambitious and particularly challenging,” Golding admitted.
He said the challenges were even more pronounced when analysis examined Scandinavian countries, which were environmentally conscious and advanced in their use of renewable energy sources, albeit paying more for it.
“Renewable energy is not always cheaper energy, but they are prepared to pay more in order to get energy that is clean, green and sustainable. Our consumers can’t be asked to bear that burden, and that’s part of our problem,” Golding said.
Conservation important
The prime minister added that while any search for alternative energy sources also had to be cheaper – in order for them to be viable – conservation was important to sustainable energy management.
Golding accused Jamaicans of being price-insensitive when it came to energy conservation, citing motorists’ refusal to change fuel-consumption patterns during 2008 when oil prices rose as high as US$148 per barrel.
The Government’s 10 per cent GCT charge on the electricity bills of persons consuming more than 200 kilowatt-hours monthly in order to make up revenue shortfall had little effect on consumption patterns.
“The information I have from the JPS (Jamaica Public Service Company – the monopoly electricity provider) is that they haven’t even blinked. They pay the 10 per cent and consume the same amount of electricity,” said Golding.
