AFC wants energy security for Guyana
In keeping with our Action Plan, the Alliance for Change (AFC) will table in Parliament a Green Paper that outlines comprehensive policy measures for energy security in Guyana. The party will pursue a sound renewable energy platform, which is good for the people, the private sector, the economy, energy security, and the environment.
The AFC has a sound development agenda to reduce our dependence on imported fossil fuel by pursuing meaningful off-shore and on-shore oil/gas exploration, bio-fuel ventures, hydro projects, etc.
AFC sees hydro power as a clean energy source that guarantees not only cheap and affordable electricity for all householders, but will ensure rapid development of the manufacturing and industrial sectors for job security and eventually, a green economy. With a sound energy policy, AFC will ensure that our Guyana, the sleeping Caribbean giant, awakens to her true potential.
For decades, our people have endured an electricity supply that has been expensive, inefficient and unreliable. Blackouts remain a daily feature of the dis-service from the state-owned Guyana Power and Light (GPL). Our people carry high electricity tariffs for poor delivery of power supply though the Treasury provided in recent years, G$40 billion to “modernize” GPL, and an additional G$11 billion in short-term “bailout” subsidies.
As a condition for short-term energy supply, AFC demands the formation of a new Board of Directors consisting of competent and professional persons to man the troubled GPL. Whilst we prepare for alternative clean energy, we must remove the technical losses and commercial theft which plague GPL and re-integrate key private sector businesses into the grid,
Towards this end, the AFC supports the construction of one or more hydro-projects as a primary solution to our energy insecurity. All of these would be based on genuine public-private partnership.
For any future hydro project, the AFC will insist on sound geo-technical studies, cost analyses and realistic rate of returns, instead of the hocus-pocus projections by the PPP Government that had placed the costs of the derailed Amaila Hydro project in 2010 at US$650 million, which climbed within three years to US$840 million, then US$858 million and, now, US$915 million.
The AFC will ensure that all technical evaluations for a hydro project are completed with financial support from Norway’s low carbon development “redd+ fund” which has a vested interest in reduction of greenhouse gases. Unlike the PPP, we insist on having the best technical and investment advice on any hydro scheme, and all transactions must be executed in a transparent fashion
As a pre-condition to activate a hydro policy, AFC will do away with secret deals by establishing the Public Procurement Commission to oversee the procurement processes for all consultancy and contracting services, and guarantee full access by Parliament to all documentation.
The AFC’s vision includes doing feasibility for (a) Hydro Power Plant at Tiger Falls to produce electricity for an alumina smelter to revitalize the bauxite industry; (b) a bio-fuel plant in the Canje Basin to pump 10% Guyanese ethanol into the imported fuel pool; (c) wind farm at Hope Beach, and (d) local production of solar panels for domestic use.