“The regulated utility model, here and in many other islands, earns its return on assets the utility owns. It earns nothing on solar a customer owns or that a third party produces, so the model works against distributed solar by design, and the path of least resistance for the utility is to try to move from a fossil fuel monopoly to a renewable energy monopoly,”
Despite efforts to promote the fuel as a cleaner alternative to other fossil fuels, environmentalists argue that cooling it alone requires immense amounts of energy, often generated by burning other fossil fuels, releasing massive volumes of CO2 before the gas is even burned.
“Competition really isnt going to help on costs” – CUC CEO, Richard Hew
URCO’s statement confirms that consumers can lawfully install and operate renewable energy systems for their own use, without requiring a separate export-and-credit programme, such as CUC’s Distributed Energy Resources (DER) or Consumer Owned Renewable Energy (CORE) schemes, where no electricity is being exported to the grid.
The announcement follows a request for qualifications process in which six bidding companies were identified as qualified to submit proposals for the 22.5 MW solar project. Names of the qualified bidders have not been made publicly available.
OfReg has only just decided to release it, following a Freedom of Information request by James Whittaker, president of the Cayman Renewable Energy Association (CREA), and a subsequent complaint made by Whittaker to the Ombudsman.
After reviewing the existing programme, OfReg said in a statement issued on Thursday that the existing programme did not offer the kinds of incentives needed to attract users and failed to “serve to advance the national energy generation and sustainability goals of the country”.
CREA noted that CUC is “the primary beneficiary of intentional actions to limit the adoption of consumer renewables in the Cayman Islands, which risks putting their competitors in the renewable energy sector out of business by shutting down their ability to operate for months at a time. CUC hopes to then capitalize on this situation once the damage is done,” the association said.
Dave Johnston, of Corporate Electric said there was currently little incentive for businesses to get involved in solar.
“In terms of job creation the absence of a clearly defined, consistent, ongoing programme is hurting the economy.”
Johnston, also head of the Cayman Contractors Association, said there were several businesses that had considered ‘entering the market’ but were put off by the stop-start allocation of capacity through the CORE programme.