This was written not long after Hurricane Matthew barreled through the Caribbean. It wreaked havoc across the east Caribbean islands, pounded Cuba and Jamaica, and had a devastating effect in Haiti, where nearly 1,000 people have tragically lost their lives. Unfortunately, hurricanes and tropical storms are a common occurrence that Caribbean countries have to endure. In the future, these extreme weather events are likely to increase in frequency and intensity due to impacts of climate change. This year, the global concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) exceeded 400 particles per million (ppm) for the first time in recorded history – a potentially ominous foreshadowing of climate change challenges that lie ahead.
Belize serves as a good case in point, where extreme weather events often lead to casualties, damaged property, and disruptions in services that are vital to economic development. The power sector in particular is in the proverbial “eye of the storm”. Hurricane Earl, which hit Belize just a couple of months ago, caused significant disruptions to electricity services. Since the year 2000, there have been over fourteen hurricanes and tropical storms that impacted Belize, and historical records confirm this number to be fifty eight extreme weather events including twenty one hurricanes since 1864. “Our geographical location makes Belize highly vulnerable,” acknowledges Minister Frank Mena, who is charged with overseeing the energy sector in Belize. He highlights the exposure of the power system to extreme weather by stressing major vulnerabilities that include “high winds knocking down power lines, flooding of energy infrastructure, storm surges along the extensive coastal areas damaging electrical equipment, electrical faults from fallen trees, and increasingly unpredictable rainfall patterns causing volatility in hydropower availability.”
Recently the World Bank and Belize Electricity Limited (BEL) reviewed several of the more recent storms to evaluate their impact on the power system in Belize and the resulting disruption in services. The assessment reviewed the cost of damages to the power system, and evaluated the resulting financial losses to BEL due to the cutback in services. While these costs were meaningful, the resulting loss in value-added in the overall economy was estimated to be 8-10 times greater. The estimated loss in GDP value-added ranged from hurricanes ranged from $3 to $5 million, underscoring the economic significance of enhancing the resilience of the power system. According to Migara Jayawardena, a Senior Energy Specialist at The World Bank, “it is a cross-cutting challenge: the results indicate that this is not just an energy sector issue, but also a larger development imperative.”
The evaluation also helped identify vulnerabilities and validate various activities BEL plans to undertake in order to enhance the resilience of the power system in Belize. Some of these key efforts include adding protections to segment the power transmission system and avoid cascading electrical faults, “hardening” sections of the transmission system that are particularly vulnerable, improving the vegetation management capabilities of the utility in order to reduce potential damages to power system during storms, and further developing BEL’s emergency response and recovery plan while also upgrading its communication system that is used during emergencies. They are part of the Energy Resilience for Climate Adaptation Project that is being implemented by the Government of Belize and BEL with funding from the Global Environment Facility’s Special Climate Change Fund.
The onslaught of Hurricane Matthew reminds us that this is not just a Belizean challenge, but a Caribbean. The Eastern Caribbean, which is often in the path of storms that traverse the Caribbean, have faced more than 180 storms since 1850 with forty percent of them categorized at hurricane-level intensity. In the Global Climate Risk Index by Germanwatch, four of the top ten countries in the world that are most affected by extreme weather are in the OECS, and all six OECS countries are represented in the top twenty. Like Hurricane Mathew, many of these storms have had destructive effects setting back hard-earned development gains. Electricity service disruptions have been prominent during many of these storms. For example, Hurricane Ivan in 2004 caused damages to an estimated 80 percent of Grenada’s electricity distribution system, leaving three quarters of its residents without power. During Hurricane Earl in 2010, all of Antigua experienced significant power outages mostly due to fallen trees on power lines. In December 2013, a tropical storm system produced excessively heavy rain in St. Lucia, leading to extensive flooding causing ground faults, broken or fallen poles, and blown fuses that left some 15 percent of customers without power. During Tropical Storm Erika in 2015, Dominica experienced wide power outages with landslides causing damage to the intakes and pipelines in the country’s hydropower plant.
The evidence is clear that, more than ever before,enhancing and investing in energy resilience needs to be a regional priority for the Caribbean.
If you want to learn more about the analysis that was carried out in Belize, representatives from BEL and the World Bank will be presenting the results on Monday, October 17, 2016, during the Utility Workshop at the Caribbean Renewable Energy Forum (CREF). During the session, copies of the report The Power System in the Eye of the Storm: The Call for Energy Resilience and Climate Adaptation in Belize [LINK] will be distributed to participants. The report can also be downloaded here.
