Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Two da­ta en­hance­ment tools in­tend­ed to as­sist the re­gion in meet­ing its en­er­gy tar­gets have been launched by the Caribbean Cen­tre for Re­new­able En­er­gy and En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy (CCREEE)

The Cari­com En­er­gy Knowl­edge Hub’s (CEKH) new da­ta por­tal with a re­new­able en­er­gy and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy donor ac­tiv­i­ty ap­pli­ca­tion and the Cari­com En­er­gy In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem (sieCari­com ), de­vel­oped by the Latin Amer­i­can En­er­gy Or­ga­ni­za­tion (OLADE) tar­gets tech­ni­cal of­fi­cers with­in en­er­gy, cli­mate change and sta­tis­tics min­istries.

Ac­cord­ing to CCREEE as Caribbean gov­ern­ments pur­sue en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty in the face of ris­ing oil and gas prices, a crit­i­cal is­sue plagu­ing ef­fec­tive im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Cari­com en­er­gy pol­i­cy is the need to im­prove the qual­i­ty and quan­ti­ty of an­a­lyt­ics and in­for­ma­tion re­quired to en­hance en­er­gy plan­ning and de­ci­sion mak­ing.

This was among the is­sues which were brought to the fore dur­ing a re­cent three-day Caribbean en­er­gy sta­tis­tics and in­for­ma­tion con­fer­ence which in­clud­ed CCREEE, Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at and the Cari­com De­vel­op­ment Fund (CDF).

CCREEE added that dis­cus­sions brought to­geth­er some 30 rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Caribbean gov­ern­ments and re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tions to tack­le chal­lenges re­lat­ing to the ab­sence of da­ta, sta­tis­tics and in­for­ma­tion with­in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

Dur­ing the open­ing ses­sion and con­cur­rent launch of the sieCari­com, OLADE’s Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary, Nu­mar Al­fon­so Blan­co-Bonil­la said coun­tries have a very im­por­tant com­mit­ment to the re­gion to im­prove the qual­i­ty and quan­ti­ty of in­for­ma­tion on the en­er­gy sec­tor, adding that this is im­por­tant in­for­ma­tion need­ed for the re­gion to achieve its en­vi­ron­men­tal and de­vel­op­ment goals.

Si­mon Zell­ner of the Tech­ni­cal As­sis­tance Pro­gramme for Sus­tain­able En­er­gy in the Caribbean (TAPSEC) al­so added that in­for­ma­tion is at the foun­da­tion of the Caribbean re­gion’s dri­ve to cre­ate a fu­ture where all its cit­i­zens have ac­cess to clean, mod­ern and af­ford­able en­er­gy ser­vices.

“Be­fore there can be strong poli­cies and reg­u­la­tions guid­ing the re­gion­al trans­for­ma­tion, there has to be high-qual­i­ty en­er­gy da­ta, sta­tis­tics and in­for­ma­tion,” he said.

Al­so in at­ten­dance, rep­re­sent­ing Cari­com in­sti­tu­tions, were Ro­d­i­nald Soomer of the CDF and Dr Gary Jack­son of the CCREEE.

Both or­gan­i­sa­tion heads high­light­ed the im­por­tance of part­ner­ship, which is at the core of re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion.

Jack­son not­ed that part­ner­ship and par­tic­i­pa­tion is re­quired to­day and be­yond, in or­der to leave no one be­hind, align­ing with Soomer’s posit­ing that the re­gion’s goals can­not be achieved by any one cor­po­ra­tion.

Dur­ing the keynote ad­dress, Dr Justin Ram al­so made men­tion of the need for re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion. He ad­vo­cat­ed for con­nect­ing the re­gion as a sin­gle eco­nom­ic space.