Page 319 - Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

292 Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

in energy transition plans. Energy efficiency can help to attenuate demand
growth and associated GHG emissions. Planning for additional capacity of
power plants by the CEB or IPPs could thus be delayed, giving breathing space
to power producers and the economy in terms of capital expenditure and the
balance of foreign exchange. The current electricity pricing model of the CEB
does not accurately reflect the financial and environmental costs of generating
and distributing electricity due to social and economic considerations. In
these circumstances, energy efficiency and demand side management (DSM)
opportunities do not receive the same interest that their relevance in the energy
system mandates. The IEP also underlined the need for additional transmission
and distribution infrastructure stemming from the operation of a scheme to
encourage small-scale electricity producers to generate their own electricity
and sell any excess production or generation to the national grid at preferential
rates.
According to the IEP, a new 100-MW coal power plant will be implemented
with all the mandatory environmental safeguards from 2015 to prevent power
outages. This decision has sparked protests from environmental organizations
and residents of the neighborhood of the identified construction site. In
the wake of the protests, the government set up a NEC to review national
energy requirements and advise authorities on the planning and execution of
major projects to address the country’s medium- and long-term energy needs.
In its report (NEC, 2013), the NEC opined that the IEP of the CEB did not
comply with the main objective of the LTES, whereby 35% of the total
electricity generation would be achieved through RE technologies by 2025. The
NEC also pointed out that it was inconceivable that a plan of such national
importance was devised without consultations with all stakeholders. Among
NECs recommendations were its advise to the government to commission an
additional capacity of 60 MW for an existing power plant running on HFO and
liquefied natural gas, increase the use of renewable sources of energy, and
integrate energy efficiency and DSM programs.
These developments highlight the limitations in the government’s
deployment plan for RE by 2025. First, the plan focuses only on the electricity
aspect of the energy consumption. Second, the portfolio of technologies
consideredisrestrictedanddoesnot takenintoaccount contemporaryalternatives.
Moreover, it is fraught with inaccuracies. The most obvious one is that the share of
bagasse-based electricity will be less than the 17% anticipated in the plan due
to the rapidly decreasing area of land under sugarcane cultivation. As such, the
focus should be on enhancing the exploitation of readily available RE sources,
predominantlysolarandwind.ThepotentialofotherabundantREsources,suchas
tidal and wave, can be tapped in the future but is conditional on resolving some
uncertainties about the technologies and their cost. More importantly, further
decarbonization ofthe powergridwillbepossiblethrough significantemphasison
a more efficient use of the present energy resources and the emergence of
cost-effective technologies. The next section describes the key enabling