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The Caribbean Island of St. Lucia is thought for its lovely seashores, lush rainforests, and colourful coral reefs. However for a few of the nearly 200,000 folks that reside on the island, one other unbelievable useful resource is affecting their every day lives — the almost 15,000 photo voltaic panels which are producing clear, dependable, electrical energy from the island’s first utility-scale photo voltaic farm.
The island’s utility firm, St. Lucia Electrical energy Providers Restricted (LUCELEC), with assist from RMI, accomplished the 4 megawatt system simply north of Hewanorra Worldwide Airport in August 2018. And within the first three years of operation, it produced 24.7 million kWh of electrical energy — sufficient to energy 3,500 houses — saving 1.5 million gallons of diesel and greater than $3 million.
Saint Lucia, a 238 sq. mile island within the japanese Caribbean is — like all small island growing states — significantly susceptible to the impacts of local weather change. In 2010, Hurricane Tomas devastated the island, damaging roads and bridges, inflicting electrical energy blackouts, and killing 14 folks. Extra just lately, final month’s Hurricane Beryl flooded streets and downed energy traces throughout the southern a part of the island. Though Saint Lucians contribute little or no to local weather change, they bear the brunt of the impacts. However they’re additionally working onerous to make their island extra resilient.
James Fletcher, former Saint Lucian minister for public service, data, broadcasting, sustainable growth, power, science and know-how, led the Caribbean’s delegation to the Paris Settlement negotiations and was an enormous a part of reaching consensus on the decision to restrict warming to 1.5°C. “If we don’t agree on 1.5°C … there’s a very strong possibility that some of these countries would physically not exist anymore,” Fletcher says. “It’s not just a matter of ‘half a degree,’ it’s a matter of life or death for so many people.” The island has a goal of lowering its local weather air pollution 23 p.c by 2050. The photo voltaic farm is one step towards that objective.
The Photo voltaic Farm Journey
The journey to the photo voltaic farm truly started in 2015 with a case examine. RMI was employed by the Authorities of Saint Lucia to develop a Nationwide Power Transition Technique for the island. The island was delivery in diesel for the only real electrical plant on the island and it was pricey. “Of course, Saint Lucia is very vulnerable to climate change. But nobody was thinking of that in 2015. It was really related to cost,” says RMI’s Kaitlyn Bunker, one of many analysts who produced the transition technique. “They were ready to make a change in their energy system.”
So, with funding from the International Surroundings Facility (managed by the United Nations Growth Program – UNDP), RMI launched into an evaluation of various renewable power eventualities for the island. On the identical time that RMI was engaged on the nationwide transition technique, the group was in search of a mission that made sense to do proper then. LUCELEC had land, and Saint Lucia is blessed with a whole lot of daylight (the island’s nationwide motto is “The Land, the People, the Light”), so a photo voltaic farm was an apparent alternative. “We were able to support the preparation work for the solar farm in parallel with doing the national level planning, and those two things could inform each other,” says Bunker.
This photo voltaic farm was the primary massive utility-scale photo voltaic farm within the area. This meant a steep studying curve for the federal government and the utility. RMI’s experience was essential, bringing a number of stakeholders collectively to collaborate and create an inclusive course of. “We demystified the process to procure a solar farm using World Bank best practices, and we really drove down pricing because we brought a bigger procurement pool to the table,” says Chris Burgess, RMI’s initiatives director.
The mission additionally demonstrated the necessity for philanthropic assist on the idea and preparation section to unlock personal finance to carry the mission to fruition. “For every dollar in philanthropic funds, we unlocked $17 in private investment,” says Burgess. “This is the highest leverage ratio the UNDP ever had.”
However Saint Lucia didn’t cease there. The island has a objective to have 35 p.c of its electrical energy be provided by renewable power by 2025, which suggests not solely extra photo voltaic farms, but additionally distributed renewables.
Catalytic Local weather Capital
Leveraging philanthropic assist to unlock personal capital is an idea that resonates to at the present time, and solely turns into extra crucial as resilience wants deepen. RMI has spun up an total follow devoted to scaling this “catalytic” capital, and has helped launch the Caribbean Local weather Good fund, which systemically de-risks and prepares power initiatives throughout Caribbean nations for funding.
Energy for Colleges, Hospitals, and Extra
Ian Welch Phillips grew up in Trinidad. He went to highschool within the UK and ended up working for a utility firm there. However after working in London on renewable power and battery storage initiatives, he received the itch to return to his native nation. “We in the Caribbean are blessed with all these resources, but we don’t utilize them. And they’re better for the environment and better for the economy,” he says. “It got to the point where I wanted to give back to the region in whatever way I could.”
He’s now a supervisor with RMI engaged on growing eight photo voltaic microgrids for Saint Lucia. They are going to energy an toddler college, a major college, a secondary college, a police station, a polyclinic, a hospital, a water therapy facility, and the Ministry of Infrastructure constructing. Phillips explains that the microgrids grew out of the nationwide power coverage and the utility-scale photo voltaic farm. “One of the next steps was more distributed renewable energy generation and providing more resilience,” he explains. “The microgrids are powering critical facilities that can continue to operate when there’s a widespread outage from a hurricane or other disaster, without having to turn on a generator.”
“The microgrids are powering critical facilities that can continue to operate when there’s a widespread outage from a hurricane or other disaster, without having to turn on a generator.” — Ian Welch-Phillips
The RMI group engaged on the microgrid initiatives are utilizing some classes discovered from the photo voltaic farm, particularly in involving the neighborhood within the course of. “You can’t plan for people, you have to plan with them,” explains Nadia Wells Hyacinth, Saint Lucia’s chief economist. And that’s the case with the microgrids. For instance, Hyacinth explains that the neighborhood was concerned from the very starting of the varsity microgrid mission. “We had stakeholder meetings in the evening with the parents and the teachers,” she explains. “The design brief actually included some of the needs of the teachers and the parents to ensure that the school was not only just a safe environment, but it was also resilient.”
Whereas these six microgrids have been designed and deliberate for, they haven’t been constructed but due to an absence of financing. “We know what it is to be in an ever-changing climate and the impact it’s having on our livelihoods,” says Hyacinth. “But being able to translate that with the necessary information, the data to justify why the climate financing is necessary, is a major challenge.” And that’s the place Skeeta Carasco is available in.
The place’s the Cash?
Carasco was born in Saint Lucia and didn’t have entry to electrical energy till she was 16 years outdated. “I remember vividly that there were power lines in the area but no points of connection. And I saw one of the managers removing the existing lines and he said we could not have service because there were not enough people in the area. So that sparked my interest in utilities and utility regulation.”
That curiosity led Carasco to work on the Nationwide Utilities Regulatory Fee serving to to advance Saint Lucia’s power transition. And he or she quickly acknowledged the crucial want for local weather finance. “Climate finance is perhaps the biggest challenge that Caribbean countries and Small Island Developing States face when it comes to mitigation and adaptation to climate change,” she believes. So Carasco joined RMI’s Local weather Finance Entry Community (CFAN), an initiative to supply nations within the Pacific and Caribbean with extremely educated, devoted local weather finance advisors to assist develop local weather change adaptation and mitigation initiatives. CFAN recruits and hires domestically, with the goal of embedding these advisors within the nations they serve. This makes Carasco an ideal match for the position.
As CFAN advisor to Saint Lucia, Carasco is presently submitting an utility for funding for these six microgrids, together with power effectivity initiatives and workforce coaching.
Carasco and the 19 different CFAN advisors within the Pacific and Caribbean are instrumental in getting initiatives on the bottom. Hyacinth agrees saying, “Having somebody who’s dedicated to understanding the funding, understanding the funders’ needs, understanding the requirements, understanding the language that the funders will accept, and who is able to translate our national needs into the requirements, developing proposals that meet the requirements of the funders, is very important.”
The Caribbean & Past
Though in 2017, when that first utility-scale photo voltaic farm went on-line, no person was speaking about resilience, it’s a distinct story now. “Now we look at it as a step toward a more resilient energy system. And other islands are aware of it, and it has spurred them to get moving as well,” says RMI’s Bunker. LUCELEC now has plans for 2 extra utility-scale photo voltaic farms on the island. Lincoln Francis, a LUCELEC engineer, remembers the ceremony on the opening of the photo voltaic farm when he was simply in secondary college. Now he realizes how vital a step that was for the island. “The more we implement renewable energy in Saint Lucia, the more we’re able to wean ourselves off of diesel,” he says. “Rural electrification is something that LUCELEC really took underneath its wing. And now that we’ve accomplished this, the goal is to do it as cheaply and as reliably as possible. And we take that very seriously.”
There have been a whole lot of classes discovered in that first power transition technique and photo voltaic farm for Saint Lucia. In line with RMI’s Burgess, “The energy transition strategy done in St. Lucia identified an optimal practical pathway to transition, of which the low hanging fruit was this first no regret solar project. That won the favor and respect of governments and utilities alike in several other jurisdictions, such as St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Turks and Caicos, Belize, and the British Virgin Islands.”
In actual fact, RMI is presently enterprise transition eventualities work for your entire area, with a objective of offering a complete roadmap for policymakers, power leaders, and buyers.
However Saint Lucia’s ambitions and on-the-ground initiatives can encourage nations properly past the Caribbean. “In terms of climate change and energy transition, Saint Lucia has always been one of the forerunners,” says Carasco. “So if we can get things going, it will show other countries in the region that this is truly possible. Despite our small size, our tough economic conditions, our extreme vulnerability to climate change and its impacts, there are measures that we can take to increase our resilience and energy independence, reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and set our economies on a path that’s greener and greatly benefits our people.”
© 2024 RMI. Revealed with permission. Courtesy of RMI. By Laurie Stone
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