RAINFOREST Caribbean aims to cut its carbon footprint even further with considerations now under way to go green through electricity generation at its shrimp farm in Belize.

The Brian Jardim-led company already produces about a third of the electricity it uses in Jamaica — its headquarters which also has its biggest production facilities — from renewables or gas. Rainforest Caribbean has operations in five territories in the region. Apart from Belize and Jamaica mentioned above it also has operations in St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Barbados.

“We have big lands in Belize. Our shrimp farm is 1,500 acres and a lot of that is undeveloped land, which is boundary lands, so it kind of lends itself to solar farming; and we are exploring all of those opportunities now as well, which would ideally make it more efficient for us,” Brian Jardim, chairman and CEO of Rainforest Caribbean, told the Jamaica Observer in a recent interview.

“That land would be more than sufficient to supply the needs of our electrical demand for our shrimp farm as well as our processing facility,” Benjamin Jardim, the business development manager for the company told the Business Observer. Benjamin is Brian’s son.

Rainforest Caribbean has two operations in Belize. It’s shrimp farm is vertically integrated, with shrimps produced from its own hatchery to harvesting mature adults. From that farm, Rainforest Caribbean produces about 1 million pounds of shrimp each year. The company also has a processing facility just a few miles away from their shrimp farm.

“That’s where we process lobster, stone crabs, and conch — chiefly for export. That same facility processes the shrimp that we export to Jamaica and the rest of the region,” Benjamin explained.

For its production across the five territories, most of the energy is consumed by blast freezers used in its operations to store seafoods and meats.

“Our cold chain is like an energy hog,” Brian Jardim, chairman and CEO of Rainforest Caribbean, told the Business Observer in a recent interview.

“It runs 24/7….and we are doing our best to bring the cost of running the freezers down. We also harvest rainwater to wash our truck,s and for landscaping, and for washdown in the plants and the yards. We have full LEDs in our freezers for lighting etc. In every which way we can, we tweak it to get as green in our footprints as possible.”

So far, to reduce its carbon footprint and save on energy costs the company has installed a 1.5-megawatt, gas-fired power plant at its Slipe Road, Kingston, head office to offset the cost of operating the huge blast freezers. It also generates 0.75 megawatts of electric power from solar installations at its Montego Bay location.

“We do a montly review of our five islands, looking at the cost of electricity per kilowatt hour,” Jardim continued. He added that the cost ranges from a low of about US$0.16 cents per kilowatt hour in Belize to US$0.47 per kilowatt hour in St Vincent, at its highest. In Jamaica the cost averages at US$0.36 cents per kilowatt hour, and in St Lucia it is about US$0.40 cents per kilowatt hour.

“Belize is particularly attractive because they have a power share arrangement with Mexico…and we get the benefit of that. But Jamaica has the biggest footprint in terms of our consumption so we have to watch that,” he noted.

About half of Rainforest Caribbean’s operations across the region is in Jamaica. That is why the company has spent US$2.5 million on its LNG plant in Jamaica and started the solar project back in 2016. Solar was first installed at its Kingston location but those panels were relocated to the Freeport, Montego Bay, operation when the LNG-fired plant was set up at its Kingston headquarters.

The price of LNG has fluctuated wildly in the last year as the war in the Ukraine forced Europe to find alternate sources than Russia for the fuel to generate electricity. Rainforest Caribbean said with that fluctuation it was paying its gas supplier anywhere between US$2.80 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) to US$9 per MMBtu.

“Even at US$9 it was still cheaper than running on JPS. Our savings by using LNG can be anywhere from 25 per cent to 50 per cent,” Benjamin pointed out. The savings could be even more now, with LNG prices falling 41 per cent in January to $2.26 per million British thermal units.

The price decline was driven by warmer-than-average temperatures across the United States in January causing a reduction in consumption of natural gas for heating at a time when natural gas production was increasing. The US Energy Information Adminstration, in its February Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), forecasts the natural gas price at the Henry Hub — its benchmark for pricing — will average US$3.40/MMBtu in 2023. If that is realised, Rainforest Caribbean’s LNG plant will continue to rack up significant savings for the company.