Oil-Stung Caribbean Looks at Energy Alternatives

Caribbean countries, vulnerable to oil shocks and worried rising global oil prices could drag their economies, are exploring renewable energy to ease high oil-import bills.

Solar energy is already used widely in Barbados and some Eastern Caribbean islands, while Jamaica has invested in wind farming and is pursuing other initiatives toward getting a 15 percent contribution from ethanol and other renewable sources to its electricity mix by 2015.

Jamaicans “have everything to gain and nothing to lose as the cost of fossil fuels will continue to climb, whereas the wind, the sun, and the water are by definition free,” said Philip Paulwell, minister of commerce, science and technology.

Planet Ark