The Renewable Energy Industry in CARIFORUM Countries

COUNTRY INDICATOR ANALYSIS

between 40 MW and 4,000 MW. Table 4.4 on previous page, shows the approximate installed capacity statistics for each country in the study. It will be used in our estimation of the investment required and the size of the RE market locally. With a regional capacity of almost 10GW, there is potentially over 8GW of capacity to be substituted with renewables. The actual required replacement capacity will be much more than 8GW because of the nature of renewable technologies being considered. PV capacity may only be available 6 hours during the 24-hour day leaving 18 hours unserved. Wind may be available between 0 and 24 hours in any day. Hydropower may be available between 6 and 12 months of the year. As a result, utilities will have to adequately model their supply of renewable energy and invest in additional storage capacity to fill the gaps. The implementation timelines differ for each country and in some cases a 100% renewable target has not been set. It must also be noted that this target may change if there is a change in demand stemming from changes in consumption patterns or primary productive sectors. Just as a shift from agriculture to tourism caused a shift in many countries, a shift to financial services or away from industries which are energy intensive will also cause a change. The CARICOM Energy Policy reported an estimated of US$5.7 trillion over the period 2010 to \ 2035. This is an old estimate which was not substantiated in the document. A second rough estimate has been done by a Funding Agency (FA1) which suggests that a mixture of RE technologies, along with the soft costs and storage, would cost about US$7M per MW. Using this estimate and 2030 as the 10-year target period for the countries and EE interventions of 10%, we can estimate the annual market for RE and EE in each country. Based on FA, it would require a total of US$63.1 Billion. A further estimate has also been done by another Funding Agency (FA2) which now allows the estimated investment to be based on Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It also considers EE interventions at close to 25% of the RE replacement cost for a period up to 2023. Based on FA2, it would require a total of US$50.7 Billion over a 10-year period. Belize, Haiti and Trinidad and Tobago were not included in FA2 study. Consequently, estimated percentage of GDP values were used in Table 4.5, on the following page, to estimate their costs. • • • There has been no comprehensive analysis on the cost of transitioning from fossil-based sources to RE sources for electricity generation in the region.

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The Renewable Energy Industry in CARIFORUM Countries