Oil-Stung Caribbean Looks at Energy Alternatives

[jpak]

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=9685

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad — Caribbean countries, vulnerable to oil shocks and worried rising global oil prices could drag their economies, are exploring renewable energy to ease high oil-import bills.

Solar energy is already used widely in Barbados and some Eastern Caribbean islands, while Jamaica has invested in wind farming and is pursuing other initiatives toward getting a 15 percent contribution from ethanol and other renewable sources to its electricity mix by 2015.

Jamaica's state-owned refinery, Petrojam, partnered with the Brazilian company Coimex to build a 40-million-gallon ethanol plant that should increase the ethanol content of gasoline from 5 percent to 10 percent.

Jamaicans "have everything to gain and nothing to lose as the cost of fossil fuels will continue to climb, whereas the wind, the sun, and the water are by definition free," said Philip Paulwell, minister of commerce, science and technology.

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[Old and In the Way]

1. Wow, Progressive thinkers......

Surprised they don't push for more solar panels, given their environmental exposure to the sun.

[phantom power]

2. I can think of a couple reasons.

I bet they're pursuing wind power because it's cheaper than solar, and they've surely got plenty of wind too, from the ocean (and it works at night!). Developing ethanol production makes sense because it provides motor fuel.

[JohnWxy]

4. Many countries are ahead of U.S. on development of ethanol and other

alternative energy sources. WE on the other hand have to deal with Exxon-Mobil et al, who detest use of ethanol - they see it as a competitor to gasoline (and they know it's superior to gas) and they won't have total control over the price.

[rfkrfk]

3. why do these poor countries use the most expensive fuel they can find

{it is my understanding that}
to make electricity, that would be petroleum products,
when, they coulduse coal, which costs next to nothing.

I'm getting kinda tired of
------------------------------
the poor don't deserve to have electricity
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as a political stance