Bill Clinton on Sustainability in the Caribbean

Earlier this month, Mirebalais Hospital in Haiti starting installing 1,800 solar panels. The hospital will have the largest solar array in Haiti and expects the panels to pay for themselves in three years. The nonprofit Partners in Health run the hospital.

Clinton says, “The Caribbean has some of the highest electricity rates in the world.” at the sustainable Operations Summit in New York last Thursday. “Almost every country in the Caribbean could be completely energy independent with solar, wind, geothermal and biomass.”

The high upfront cost of renewables and the lack of investment regulation and framework are the biggest problems hindering their development.

According to Clinton it is creative financing that is the key.

The problem with most existing programs is that utilities underwrite the development loans. By minimising the role of the utility it could reduce the cost and build far larger funds to finance distributed generation and energy efficiency.

“When you think about all of the capital that wants to get into this space and all the labor that’s available, I feel like its 1994 with the web: it hasn’t quite tipped yet, but in two or three years, the dam will break,” Murat Armbruster, senior advisor to the Carbon War Room, said at the Sustainable Operations Summit.