The European Union is funding a multi-million dollar energy service company (ESCO) project aimed at conserving electricity use across the island.
Executive Director of the Jamaica Productivity Centre, Dr Charles Douglas, said the 36-month J$65 million initiative could increase productivity and help create jobs as well as advance economic growth.
“We expect that the project will also do a number of other things. It will introduce new business modules, in terms of energy efficiency activities. It will also increase dialogue, trust, and confidence among the Jamaican populous,” he said.
He said the ESCO project has several components, including building public awareness, conducting training workshops, audits, and measurement and verification to determine the possible savings of the plan.
“With this project, the centre hopes to have an increase in energy effectiveness, as a result of the measures to be implemented. We expect to have an increase in the number of renewable and energy efficiency projects islandwide, to reduce high costs,” he said.
Douglas said that ECSO projects are common worldwide and tends to be very successful in countries where energy prices are extremely high, such as Latin America and the Caribbean.
He said that Jamaica, in comparison to other Caribbean countries, has one of the highest energy prices, both for electricity and gasolene, hence the reason for introducing the cost-effective initiative.
“At the end of the day, we want to see a reduction in the oil import bill, which obviously will help to reduce the foreign expenditure and imported oil, which the country is currently faced with,” he said.
Douglas added that unlike Jamaica, some countries receive energy subsidies, both for gasolene and electricity, but “our market is totally liberalised, in that we have no subsidy on electricity or gasolene, so we have to find ways to reduce these high costs”.
Both sectors to benefit
He said that the ESCO project aims to achieve this, and notes that if consumers conform to the practices of the project, then it will be a success and that both the private and public sectors would benefit in the future.
“We expect substantial benefits from this initiative to both small and medium enterprises islandwide. We are anticipating significant savings in the public sector, stemming from ECSO energy savings activities,” he added.
“There will be indicators to identify if the project has achieved success. We will be looking at schools islandwide as a possible indicator, while we conduct our evaluation to measure the achievements of the project.
“When the project concludes, we would like to have in place measures that will allow it to be sustainable. We are building the capacity of the project by getting the schools involved. From this, the hope is to sensitise children, so that they can go home, and encourage their parents to adopt energy efficiency practices” he said.
– CMC
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