The Caribbean has no short­age of sun and sea, so most would ex­pect that its pri­ma­ry ven­tures in­to re­new­able en­er­gy sources would in­volve so­lar and hy­dro­gen projects.

How­ev­er, British Pro­fes­sor Dr Alan Low­don al­so has seen the po­ten­tial for an­oth­er av­enue of green en­er­gy gen­er­a­tion through off­shore wind farms.

“The key in­gre­di­ent for the off­shore wind in­dus­try to come to light or in­deed the on­shore wind in­dus­try is wind. So there has to be a good wind pro­file for the in­dus­try to take root and the Caribbean has got a fan­tas­tic wind, whether the wind is in the right place at the right time. To serve the mar­ket in that vicin­i­ty is to be de­ter­mined, but on pa­per, it’s all there in terms of the raw nat­ur­al com­mod­i­ty which is need­ed to pro­pel the in­dus­try for­ward,” Dr Low­don said.

Dr Low­don, a Pro­fes­sor in Prac­tice at Durham Uni­ver­si­ty’s En­er­gy In­si­ti­tute in the Unit­ed King­dom and a spe­cial­ist in off­shore wind, told the Busi­ness Guardian that the Caribbean and in par­tic­u­lar T&T did have the ca­pac­i­ty to ex­plore this op­tion, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the coun­try’s his­to­ry in the en­er­gy in­dus­try.

“The oil and gas economies around the world are all se­ri­ous­ly look­ing at off­shore wind de­ci­sions as a key part of their en­er­gy tran­si­tion. And the Caribbean is no dif­fer­ent. T&T is clear­ly the leader in the re­gion in oil and gas. I think the skills, the tech­nolo­gies, and the ex­per­tise in de­ploy­ing are all rel­e­vant to off­shore wind and I think this gives the coun­try a fan­tas­tic start in terms of the ini­tial­i­sa­tion of the off­shore wind in­dus­try. But it will take time, things need to be done to get to that point,’ said Low­don dur­ing an in­ter­view at the Hy­att Re­gency.

He felt that cur­rent­ly, the ma­jor ob­sta­cle that need­ed to be over­come was not nec­es­sar­i­ly in­fra­struc­ture but rather poli­cies to en­sure the growth and de­vel­op­ment of wind farms in the coun­try and the re­gion.

“I think it’s not so much phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture, but pol­i­cy. I think the pol­i­cy in­stru­ments are things which ini­ti­ate and catal­yse the in­dus­try or have done glob­al­ly. And I think that is the main shift that needs to take place to get to the Caribbean, T&T in par­tic­u­lar, in­to a place where off­shore be­comes a se­ri­ous con­tender in the en­er­gy mix,” he said.

He ex­plained that many of Trinidad’s off­shore rigs could be con­vert­ed for wind en­er­gy use, and there had been some progress al­ready in that re­gard.

“It cer­tain­ly can and there is one ex­am­ple in the Trinidad fields of a tur­bine be­ing erect­ed on top of a gas plat­form. That’s great. It’s quite com­mon­place in the North Sea and is be­com­ing more and more com­mon. So yes, be­cause of the height, the tur­bine is in­stalled on a fixed plat­form. So you haven’t got the chal­lenges of putting it in­to the ocean and you can put the grid con­nec­tion or the con­nec­tion that goes through the ex­ist­ing elec­tri­cal wiring in­fra­struc­ture in the ca­ble in­fra­struc­ture on the plat­form it­self,” he said.

But he did ad­mit that wind en­er­gy re­quired a size­able in­vest­ment.

“It’s very cap­i­tal in­tense. The large-scale wind farms are in­deed cap­i­tal in­tense, as you would ex­pect be­cause there are pow­er sta­tions in the ocean. So that size of cap­i­tal in­vest­ment re­quire­ments, dwarfs what you would get if you are ac­tu­al­ly putting a so­lar farm in place.

“So there has to be deep, deep­er pock­ets to get the in­dus­try go­ing. But the re­turn on in­vest­ment is quite quick, when you ac­tu­al­ly put that wind farm in place be­cause tur­bines have got­ten larg­er, you can the pow­er pro­duc­tion is in­creas­ing. And if you dou­ble the length of a wind tur­bine blade, you in­crease the pow­er out­put from that tur­bine by a fac­tor of four. So you can see if you can get your hands on good foot­prints of land or in the ocean, then you’re able to put these big ma­chines in place and to get your quick re­turn on in­vest­ment,” said the pro­fes­sor.

“An off­shore wind farm is typ­i­cal­ly I mean, these fig­ures are very high lev­el about in dol­lar terms, let’s just do the con­ver­sion. It would be around US$3.5 mil­lion per megawatt in­stalled,” he said.

“That cost has come down over the years, but still, that com­pares with about US$1.25m for on­shore wind per megawatt. So you have to have ac­cess to cap­i­tal, good qual­i­ty cap­i­tal, and al­so in the right coupon, the right in­ter­est rates, be­cause new mar­kets are of­ten per­ceived to be more risky than es­tab­lished mar­kets un­til the in­dus­try takes off in those mar­kets.”

He ac­knowl­edged that the Caribbean was still very much test­ing the wa­ters rather than div­ing head-first in­to the realm of wind en­er­gy.

But there are signs that it is be­ing con­sid­ered in re­gion; Ja­maica cur­rent­ly has two wind farms while last Sun­day, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les con­firmed, dur­ing his ad­dress at the Caribbean Elec­tric Util­i­ty Ser­vices Cor­po­ra­tion (Car­ilec) en­gi­neer­ing and pro­cure­ment con­fer­ence, that T&TEC would be test­ing wind en­er­gy gen­er­a­tion at four sites over the next 12 months.

“Test­ing will be done at two sites at a time, the wind speed da­ta col­lect­ed over the twelve-month pe­ri­od will be sued to de­ter­mine whether suf­fi­cient wind re­sources ex­ist at these lo­ca­tions and es­ti­mate the per­for­mance and eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty of wind tur­bine gen­er­a­tion,’ said Gon­za­les, “Should wind tur­bine gen­er­a­tion be found fea­si­ble, the da­ta will aid in the de­vel­op­ment of wind farms in T&T. Which would add re­new­able tech­nol­o­gy to the coun­try’s port­fo­lio for pow­er gen­er­a­tion. The long-term ben­e­fit be­ing the re­duc­tion of car­bon emis­sions as­so­ci­at­ed with fos­sil fu­el gen­er­a­tion.”

Dr Low­don be­lieved that with the glob­al push for net ze­ro, the Caribbean would in­crease its ex­plo­ration of wind en­er­gy.

“I think there is a de­lib­er­ate de­gree of con­ser­vatism, which you would ex­pect, and in­deed you would want to see, be­cause peo­ple need to un­der­stand what they’re do­ing is go­ing to de­liv­er the goods that they are ex­pect­ing. So the ben­e­fits I’m ex­pect­ing, so that’s good. There is def­i­nite­ly a com­pe­tence base, and that the gov­ern­ment re­alis­es it is in place to be able to de­liv­er these schemes en­gi­neer­ing, cor­po­rate fi­nance, in­sur­ance, that type of thing. It’s all in place in the gas sec­tor. So what can be lever­aged? But I think there’s the de­sire to move to net ze­ro is go­ing to be glob­al re­quire­ments of the Caribbean in terms of its ex­ports. So they are gonna have to be an au­dit trail for how those ex­ports were de­rived. And I think every­thing then stacks up back to the base where the com­mod­i­ty is cre­at­ed.

To prove that as green tech­nol­o­gy has been used as pos­si­ble to de­liv­er,’ said Dr Low­don, who felt there were strate­gies that had been adopt­ed around the world which could fos­ter greater in­ter­est in wind en­er­gy in the Caribbean.

“I think the pol­i­cy in­stru­ments which tend to be suc­cess­ful glob­al­ly, are the ones which put some form of in­cen­tivi­sa­tion to the mar­ket ini­tial­ly, to get the mar­ket go­ing. So that could be some­thing like a feed-in tar­iff, or it could be a re­al re­new­able en­er­gy cer­tifi­cate, which is usu­al­ly the stim­u­lus that the mar­ket needs for the sup­ply chain to take it se­ri­ous­ly and for them to in­vest in them­selves to be able to de­liv­er the sec­tor in the way which it needs to be de­liv­ered,” he said.

He point­ed to the de­ci­sions made in the Unit­ed King­dom that pushed the in­dus­try along as an ex­am­ple which could be fol­lowed by the re­gion­al lead­ers if they de­cid­ed to pur­sue wind en­er­gy as an op­tion.

“I speak from the UK po­si­tion, as it is cer­tain­ly the largest ma­tured shore wind sec­tor and ma­tur­ing as we speak. The UK put the poli­cies in place around the ear­ly 2000s. The staged in­cen­tivi­sa­tion mech­a­nisms have al­lowed the in­dus­try to ad­vance and I think there’s a lot of his­tor­i­cal good prac­tice, not per­fect, but good prac­tice that the Caribbean could adapt to its re­quire­ments. So yes, the pol­i­cy in­cen­tives, and al­so the way that the in­dus­try has played out on the back of those things be­ing put in place. It is all there to learn from,” the pro­fes­sor said.

He not­ed that wind en­er­gy adop­tion would be hard­er to adopt on a small­er scale as seen with rooftop so­lar pan­els, but he said com­mu­ni­ties pow­ered by wind farms could be an op­tion.

“The av­er­age con­sumer can in­stall their own mi­cro-wind en­er­gy sys­tems on their land. That’s a pos­si­bil­i­ty, clear­ly, that’s not off­shore. So those pos­si­bil­i­ties do ex­ist but it doesn’t ex­ist in the same way that so­lar does with rooftop so­lar, be­cause it’s a dif­fer­ent as­set class, and it’s dif­fer­ent en­gi­neer­ing con­straints.

“And grid in­te­gra­tion con­straints which go with wind en­er­gy com­pared with rooftop so­lar, but what we’re see­ing around the world is com­mu­ni­ties com­ing to­geth­er with a shared lines to put mi­ni wind farms in place, for ex­am­ple. These aren’t the big things that you see in the ocean. These are small mi­cro­tur­bines, which when ag­gre­gat­ed up can help a com­mu­ni­ty do good stuff,” said Dr Low­don.

He said how­ev­er, should T&T adopt off­shore wind en­er­gy, it would de­vel­op new op­por­tu­ni­ties for the labour force which al­so could be ben­e­fi­cial for the econ­o­my.