#BTColumn – Avoid an energy ponzi scheme

Over the past years, The Barbados Association of Professional Engineers (BAPE) has been trying to warn everyone who will listen that while the Barbados National Energy Policy (BNEP) is indeed a brilliant vision for Barbados’s energy future, there exists a very wide gap between excellent vision/ policy, and actual implementation and reality.

One of the most excellent energy initiatives ever expounded in Barbados was the concept of “Waste-to-Energy”, where technology is available to convert solid waste – which now represents a complex, expensive and worsening operational challenge for us as a country, into a valuable energy source to replace imported fossil fuels – another  major burden on our economy.

It is difficult to conceive of a more worthwhile concept than this, that could take two major negatives and create
a huge positive for the country.

We all know how that ‘great’ vision ended.

The concept of building a ‘Four Seasons’ resort on what was literally and figuratively ‘Paradise’ also represents a brilliant win-win vision with everything going for it. That too, ended up in disarray.

BAPE has the unfortunate responsibility to advise that unless urgent and fundamental changes are made to the current progression of the Barbados Sustainable Energy transformation, the brilliant vision of converting
Barbados to 100 per cent sustainable energy by 2030 is doomed to join these other outstanding conceptual masterpieces in the recycle bin.

An Energy Ponzi Trap

In today’s complex world, implementation is incredibly complicated. It requires a deep understanding of all the underlying sciences, and enough experience and technical depth to compensate for the multiple pitfalls and barriers that will inevitably present themselves in any major infrastructural undertaking.

There are always opportunities for a few persons to benefit – sometimes quite handsomely. Even when such major failures as Four Seasons and CAHILL occur, there are those who make their profits upfront, like lenders and equipment suppliers, unlike those investors who are in
it for the long term.

The current Feed-In-Tariff (FIT) arrangement for solar energy is an excellent case in point. Up front, investors
stand to make impressive returns on their investments.

However, it is clearly obvious that this is not a sustainable arrangement, since as more and more persons invest in these systems, the utility will be collecting less and less revenue, while having to pay out greater and greater FIT returns to these investors.

The only source of the Utility’s income will then be those who are left without PV systems. These are likely to be the least able to pay the increased rates required to pay the early investors, and so then the scheme will collapse.

Carried to its ultimate logical conclusion, when all Barbadians have installed PV systems on their roofs, and are paying minimum bills, and awaiting returns from their FIT contracts, the Utility will be required to create money ‘from nothing’ to pay these investors, as well as to cover their own operating expenses.

Obviously, investors will lose the income needed to repay their investment loans . . . and perhaps even lose their loan security, such as their mortgaged homes.

This identical situation happened in Spain between 2007 and 2022. When their energy ‘Ponzi scheme’ collapsed, government imposed a ‘Sun Tax’ on every solar panel installed. This tax had to be so draconian, that many investors simply removed their systems just to avoid the tax. Many went bankrupt.

Professional Planning

The way to avoid these situations is actually very well documented. It is called “Proper Planning and Preparation”. We now do it routinely with major infrastructural projects such as public buildings, bridges etc.

“Proper Planning” is a process where competent professionals, who not only understand the complex processes involved, but who are professionally bound by ethical standards and performance liability insurance, are commissioned to develop the total project in minute detail, making clear provision for known contingencies. They then devise a logical and defendable long-term implementation and project management process that achieves the successful completion of the vision.

At present, the Barbados’ energy trajectory is exactly like that followed by Spain. It is also very similar to our experiences with CAHILL and Four Seasons.

Those who can afford to, and even some who can’t, are jumping headlong into the ‘vision’ without any clear plan
of what the final result will look like.

This is a dangerous error.

The Barbados Association of Professional Engineers is therefore calling upon those with the awesome responsibility for bringing this transformational initiative to reality, to set out urgently and clearly for all players and end-users alike, the Plan and the Process by which the Barbados National Energy Policy will be actualised, clearly identifying the various steps and attributed milestones to be achieved along the way.

Energy is much too critical to every sector of Barbados, to be allowed to fail for lack of professional planning.

Trevor Browne is president of the Barbados Association of Professional Engineers (BAPE).