Earlier last month, a memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed by the government of St. Kitts and Teranov, a French engineering and services company for new and renewable energy based in Guadeloupe, to begin geothermal exploration on the island of St. Kitts. The agreement includes a roadmap that paves the way for the production of geothermal energy in 2020.
Minister of public infrastructure, posts, urban development and transport and GEOLAC 2015 speaker, Ian “Patches” Liburd signed the MOU with the goal to mitigate the significant debt which the government owes to PetroCaribe and Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA) through renewable energy generation.
President of Teranov and GEOLAC 2015 attendee, Jacques Chouraki, says the prospects for geothermal energy on St Kitts are promising and that feasibility studies of are presently being conducted on the island, by geoscientists:
“We have decided to invest a lot of manpower in this project in order to speed up the process so that as quickly as possible the St Kitts population will be able to know exactly if there are geothermal resources available or not”, Chouraki said.
An increasingly urgent conversation on climate change has served to motivate St. Kitts to develop its inherent renewable sources, and Chouraki believes that the government must adopt a policy of renewable energy to ensure economic growth. Implementation will be made easier by the upcoming Parliament and first reading of the St Christopher Electricity Act, which is being amended to accommodate alternative energy, feeding tariffs, net billing, and solar, wind and geothermal energy.
Chief executive officer of St Kitts Electricity Company Limited (SKELEC), Cartwright Farrell, said that “one of the good things about geothermal is that it is base load energy that is indigenous to St Kitts. It is down in our earth and we don’t have to import it and in this day and age when everybody is talking about climate change we are taking a very good step in moving forward towards our own climate change issues.”
To read more about geothermal energy in St. Kitts, click here.
