There’s a call for Caribbean leaders to work more closely with each other in order to achieve the renewable energy goals of the region.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Caribbean Sustainable Energy Forum (CSEF) on Wednesday, executive director of the Caribbean Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (CCREEE) Dr Gary Jackson said collaboration from Caricom member states is lagging.

“We are resilient collectively, not separately! We seem to be afraid or there’s a limiting factor that is not causing us to operate in a regional framework but I believe we will get there,” said Dr Jackson.

To that end, he’s urging Caribbean governments to keep the regional energy objectives at the front of their minds when negotiating individual renewable energy projects.

“Regional prime ministers, premiers, ministers, I gather that bilateral negotiations you have with your international community are important to you. Supporting your respective energy programmes among other things, but please, I beg you, always view your discussions and negotiations through a regional lens. Please work with your regional institutions. You have established them to leverage economies of scale, leveraging our regional human capacity,” he said.

Similarly, Barbados’ Energy Minister Kerrie D Symmonds, who also spoke at the opening ceremony, noted that “Although we continue to speak of sustainable energy with great conviction…we say so knowing full well that our existence, in fact our very survival requires nothing less than draconian do or die approaches in order to achieve this target.”

He highlighted that, “The region must also be cognisant of the commitments in the Caribbean sustainable energy road map and strategy which proposes a set of aggregated regional targets for electricity generation from renewable energy sources in the amount of 47 per cent by the year 2027.”

While efforts have been made to achieve that target, European Union Ambassador to Barbados, the OECS and Caricom Malgorzata Wasilewska noted that, “The COP in Glasgow has shown that things are going in the right direction but definitely not at the right speed.”

Nevertheless, Symmonds maintains that “with all that has occurred within the realm of energy and the sustainable transformation of our economies the Caricom energy programme has been leading from the front with their continuous efforts to cater specifically to the betterment of all the countries it represents”.

He continued, “While there is a plethora of project plans existing in this region, there is a large disconnect between the sustainable energy projects being conceptualised and the volume of untapped capital which is available.”

As a result he admitted that “there is a need for a collaborative approach by this region in its efforts to protect the transformation process from being derailed by phenomena like unprecedented volatilities in shipping, disruption of supply chains, logistics, disruptive challenges with obtaining bridging fuels such as natural gas in the desired quantities that we need and the limited support that is available for the exploitation of our offshore resources.”

The Caribbean Sustainable Energy Forum (CSEF) is an event of the Caricom, co-organised with the CCREEE, other institutions and member states of Caricom, as well as development agencies and partners. This year, the seventh edition of CSEF is being hosted within Caricom Energy Month, focused on the theme: ‘From Dependence to Resilience, Fuelling our Recovery with Sustainable Energy’.