P.M. Reiterates Transparency of PUC’s Decision on Renewable Energy Providers

Dean Barrow

Eight companies which submitted bids for the provision of energy to the national grid were recently shortlisted by the Public Utilities Company. One company which wasn’t…submitted a proposal using the cohune shell to generate electricity. Today, the Prime Minister was asked about it, and he reiterated that the selection by the P.U.C. is transparent and if any company’s bid was rejected, then there must have been good reason. 

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“I know that there’s been a campaign by a gentleman, I think he is Mister Castillo, with respect to a project that his concern floated and that obviously didn’t make it. I don’t know the details, I did inquire of Minister Grant in Cabinet and she said first of all, it is not really cohune—I forget what she said it really was—before you get to the cohune. But she made the point—I don’t want to misrepresent her—but the point was made that that project was evaluated and was found not to be viable and there are very many reasons why a project might be found not to be viable in terms of making it on to the shortlist: cost, lack of expertise, whatever. But she reminded me at Cabinet that the process of evaluating these proposals was conducted in the most transparent fashion when assistance from the Clinton Foundation. I remember I met with Ira Magazine, who was you would recollect was a big deal when Clinton was president. I met with Ira Magaziner who had said that their experts are going to be assisting the PUC and that I could be certain that the most professional evaluation would take place. I have to feel that that is what occurred. I had just this morning sent a message to Mister John Avery, why sir is not the PUC getting out there and explaining to the public precisely how the process operated and why it is that in the decision of the experts that project didn’t qualify to be on the short list.”