St. Maarten Private Eye

It has been 5 years now almost to the day that I wrote a one page article for the Herald suggesting that St.Maarten look into using wind energy to lower it’s high energy costs. Back then I think oil was around $25.00 a barrel and forecasters were worried it might hit $45.00. Hard to believe that in only 5 short years $45.00 a barrel oil now seems like the good old days. In that five years I see that GEBE has spent 15 million for new engines to power their generators and Roy is talking about needing to spend another 30 million for additional generating capacity to meet future needs. He also states that generators need to be ordered right now because there is a 2-year lead-time required to obtain the equipment. I’ve got news for him, if he would do his job and investigate the uses of wind energy he would find that all the needed additional capacity and then some could be provided in less than 6 months. Here is a link to a site where a 30 MW wind farm came online start to finish within that time frame. http://www.fennerwind.com/index.html

As to the cost, there are several Dutch companies that have been investing heavily into wind power, both Shell and a company called Nuon comes to mind. Holland has already signed onto the Kyoto Protocol and is committed to reducing their output of greenhouse gasses so I’m sure there is money available for the development of a wind farm for St.Maarten but first you have to ask. With the wind resources that exist in St.Maarten and the unpredictability in future oil prices this would seem like a no-brainer to me. In addition to making sound financial sense you have the added benefit of not destroying the environment.