Energy policy recommendations presented
It is an issue that’s a growing concern for government officials… energy: its production, distribution, and conservation. With that in mind, a joint commission comprised of representatives of the public, private, and non-governmental sectors has been working for the past year, investigating safe, affordable, environmentally friendly ways of producing energy. Head of the Project Steering Committee, Dr. Gilbert Canton, this morning handed over its final report to Prime Minister Said Musa. The report states that seventy-one percent of Belize’s energy is imported, including one hundred percent of fossil fuels and fifty percent of our electricity. One of the most interesting findings is that the primary consumer of energy in Belize is the transport sector, responsible for fifty-seven percent of the total usage. Armed with such information, Canton and his team made forty-five policy recommendations to the Government as the building blocks of a National Energy Plan.
Dr. Gilbert Canton, Chair., Public Utilities Commission
“A case might be able to be made that there’s an implicit energy policy operating in the country. However, there’s no articulated explicit policy laid out in any documentation that can guide people in where they want to go with investment, where Belize is going in terms of a comprehensive energy plan and direction for the future. So what we are saying is that that needs to be formulated and laid out somewhere so that somebody can look at and read it and say yes, this is where we are going to go with the plan. But to do a plan like that is one thing, what happens to a plan like that is that it might not be implemented. So crucial to having a plan is also implementation of it, and we are saying that needs to be coordinated through some entity and we are suggesting that entity be a Office of Energy under the Prime Minister’s Office.”
Prime Minister Said Musa
“We have to be flexible in our strategies to bring about a good sustainable energy plan for Belize. And I believe that energy is a very crucial factor, it’s cross cutting, it affects the whole economy, whether it be in terms of electricity and expanding electricity and reducing the costs to our people, whether it be in terms of how we deal with the growing demand for better transportation, and also in terms of the lifestyles of people. More people are using electric stoves, washing machines, appliances; these things consume a lot of energy. I didn’t make that point in my speech, but energy conservation or proper efficient utilisation of energy is very important, and I think we tend to be wasteful in our country. We have to be far more conscious of the cost of energy and we have to be more thrift conscious in the use of energy.”
The formulation of a national energy plan project was funded by the United Nations Development Programme, the Government of Belize, and the Public Utilities Commission.
