Energy-Geek: US Virgin Islands Launches 15-12 months Electricity Initiative to Reduce Fossil Gas Use sixty%

Sunday, February 19, 2012

US Virgin Islands Launches 15-12 months Electricity Initiative to Reduce Fossil Gas Use sixty%

Photograph courtesy NREL

Concentrating on new, emerging systems in locations and environments exactly where they can make the greatest effect makes a lot of feeling, and when it will come to renewable vitality, island communities, cities, and states match the invoice. A cleanse, renewable vitality motion is afoot in Hawai’i, where proponents are laying out a route to a a hundred% renewable energy foreseeable future. A equivalent initiative is underway in the US Virgin Islands.

Like Hawai’i, the USVI — at wonderful and rising charges — depends on oil imports to produce most of its electricity, virtually one hundred% of it in the scenario of the USVI. As a outcome, the Caribbean island territory’s 110,000 residents pay some $ .47 for every kilowatt-hour (kWh) for electrical energy — some four-5x more than customers in the continental US. USVI citizens also rely on international oil to produce freshwater through seawater desalination.

USVI Governor John P. de Jongh Jr. and his administration are trying to alter all that. Functioning with the DOE’s Country wide Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Interior Dept., de Jongh has crafted a organizing framework, the aim of which is to reduce fossil fuel use on the islands by sixty% in the next 15 many years.

Meeting a Prolonged-term Challenge: The Benefits of Decreasing Fossil Gas Use

The USVI depends on tourism for some eighty% of its financial action. Travelers from other climates tend to truly like their a/c. That can make decreasing fossil gasoline usage even much more of a problem, 1 that demands energetic help and participation all alongside the electric power production and intake price chain — from buyers to strength producers. Not the least amongst them is successfully integrating a mix of intermittent, renewable vitality resources into the grid and assuring a prepared provide of high-quality electrical power. Another crucial element of accomplishing the software’s aims is profitable lasting support from the islands’ citizens and organizations.

The advantages are quite a few, sizeable, and lasting, nonetheless. Good results in the USVI would not only yield numerous, extended-expression benefits economically, socially, and environmentally, but it would also lead to replicating the signifies and methods in the continental US.

“What we’re trying to do is integrate each and every large portion of renewable vitality into our system,” mentioned Karl Knight, director of USVI’s Power Business office and a board member of the Virgin Islands Water and Electrical power Authority, in an NREL press release. “Think of it as a pilot for how to integrate renewables as a huge proportion of the grid.”

NREL has labored with USVI authorities, utilities, and community and non-public groups to map the island territory’s renewable power likely in purchase to craft a workable strategy that would outcome in renewable energy assets meeting its electric power demands by 2025. The system calls for developing out a mix of six different technologies. By much, the single most significant resource of potential fossil gasoline reduction will come from one more resource, even so — energy performance advancements.

The higher expense of employing oil to produce electrical power and freshwater has put growing strain on residents’ pocketbooks, low-cash flow citizens, and retirees, in certain. Their lowered private cash flow and spending has also constrained financial advancement.

“If the fee is likely to be forty cents a kilowatt hour or much more, it styles the form of organization that’s willing to identify in the Virgin Islands,” Knight elaborated. “Our complete dependence on oil for strength era in an era of high-priced crude oil is having a large affect.”

USVI’s Fossil Gas Reduction System: Electricity Efficiency and a Blend of Renewable Energy Sources

The USVI uses up 2.6 million barrels of oil every single calendar year to generate electrical energy and desalinate seawater. Reducing this 60% by 2025 can be achieved by the subsequent mix of renewable energy and vitality performance enhancements, in accordance to the USVI-NREL system:

two % biomass

three % landfill gas

3 % solar

6 % wind

eight percent squander-to-electricity

38 percent vitality effectivity

“We consider sixty percent is very realistic,” Knight said. “The federal government founded that aim in collaboration with NREL and the Island Countries international partnership. They challenged Gov. de Jongh to be aggressive in his goal-setting and he took them up on it. We founded the aggressive objective since we devote so considerably on vitality. The only thing that people in the Virgin Islands chat about is the dimensions of their electric bills.”

Improving the energy effectiveness of the USVI electric utility is the most price-efficient, “low-hanging fruit” that ought to be taken gain of, explained NREL’s Karen Petersen. Other measures that “will support immensely” are as simple as turning off lighting in structures and decreasing the air conditioning in tourist accommodations. “We’re functioning to generate a total cultural shift,” Petersen said. “They’re quite conservative in their use of electricity since of need to have, but it doesn’t necessarily revolve about an environmental ethic.”