Discussion on newsgroup on Belize Energy Policy

The Government is a follower of private sector individuals and is not an initiator. There is no money to do Research and Development at the government level. Besides the obvious, that 9 to 5 bureaucrats with timed coffee breaks and chat breaks, do not have any incentive to develop anything. ( They are salaried and not hungry )

Ray Auxillou

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Exactly Ray,

Currently there exist no Government department that takes and active role in energy policy production. The Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment really only deals with pollution control, environmental protection and mineral resources.

We also do not have a Government agency dedicated to for the promotion of sustainable energy. Even after the fact that the PUC, under the National Energy Plan project, advising the GOB to promote sustainable energy use and renewable energy source uptake.

What we need to do first and foremost is an energy strategy and to develop this, we have to preemptively develop a comprehensive National Energy Policy, which will give us the necessary data we need to do things like an energy audit, which is a tool to improve energy efficiency in buildings.

Several studies have told the GOB that we need to start assessing renewable energy sources such as biomass, wind and solar energy.

Charles Leslie Jr.
Leslie Street
Placencia Village
Stann Creek District

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RE: Energy policy in Belize, There are plenty of studies out there. Below I name a few which might be of interest:

UNDP Belize (2009): Belize and Climate Change: The Cost of Inaction
CLICK HERE

Page 34 talks about the Belize energy sector.

Another one, Waight & Associates (2008) already three years ago recommended that Belize should develop and implement a National Energy Policy (p 27):
CLICK HERE

The Organization of American States explored the problem of sustainable energy policies for other countries in the region back in 2007:
SUSTAINABLE ENERGY POLICY INITIATIVE REPORT FOR LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
CLICK HERE

I also recommend e.g. REEEP for more information: http://www.reeep.org/

Timo

I think Charles meant proactively in place of premptively...

Policy goals aside such as promote green power, bioresource reclamation,carbon footprints neutrality or even carbon emission banking considering the new UN enrgy grant programs for CARICOM nations you need to

identify & inventory imported power contributions (and source type)

identify and inventory exisiting national (within Belize) energy sources (fossil, hydro, wind, solar,biomass),

identify each sources percentile contributions to the grid,

identify possible and desirable expansion of exisiting national source types taking into consideration all economic and environmental factors,

identify and inventory energy users by class and type

establish practical goals for self sufficiency or at least minimization of grid importaions

identify where energy conservation efforts can be result in real energy savings to the existing grid from the inventory of users

seek international grant funding that will help accomplish any and all the above

and a few more I just cant recall from a comprehensive energy program guidlines document I read a while back...