This year, the Caribbean Renewable Energy Forum, organized by the New Energy Events LLC took place from 18th October to 20th October 2017 in Miami, United States of America. The conference focused on the enabling environment, commercialization, and implementation in the Caribbean region.
CREF is the biggest annual gathering of both local and international energy stakeholders reaching out for renewable energy investment opportunities in the Caribbean. Representatives from Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Barbados, Guyana, Puerto Rico, and Trinidad & Tobago gathered together in this year’s forum. They concentrated on investment regulation, financing, utility-scale, distributed generation, storage, smart grids, energy efficiency, and more.
This year, for the first time, The Ontario Government participated in CREF and took part in this hot renewable energy market.
Participants
On behalf of our team at Phoventus, our CEO and Managing Director, Rob Lydan attended the Forum. On the first day, after the welcoming remarks, attendees started the Forum with global trends shaping investment in clean energy in the Caribbean. The subtopics included President Trump’s reversal of the U.S. commitment to the Paris Agreement. Another topic was the question of the impact of Irma and Maria on the flow of climate funding in the region. Also, the panel assessed the geopolitical and economic landscape. Moreover, it discussed how global trends would shape the trajectory of investment in the Caribbean over the course of the next decade.
Dr. Cl
etus Bertin, Executive Director of CARILEC, Joseph Cox, Assistant Secretary-General Trade and Economic Integration of CARICOM Secretariat, Therese Turner-Jones, General Manager, Country Department Caribbean Group of the Inter-American Development Bank, and many other Caribbean energy leaders took the stage. They projected their views about how the region can influence international donors. Furthermore, they discussed the need of investing more resources to build resiliency in the face of a rapidly changing climate. Additionally, the feasibility of exporting surplus baseload from island to island was discussed. Also, the alignment to streamline the planning and procurement of generation by policy-makers and utilities was one of the topics. These were just some of the many striking facts that were taken into consideration during the conference.
Discussions
Dialog between stakeholders generated around discussions driven by the need for islands to rethink the approach to resilience and shifted the move from a “What If?” to a “What’s Next?”.
The Caribbean Renewable Energy Forum was very well organized to connect people with the same goals. From networking lunches with roundtable exercises to case studies and presentations of new projects. In fact, exploring and understanding other entities in the region was never been this clear. During the conference, people took initiative to introduce their ideas on new approaches to procurement of renewables in a rapidly evolving market. Finally, people shared new approaches to financing climate & grid resilience, and more.
We collected some of the presentations and graphics for you. So, you can have a look at who are the top performers in the Caribbean and some new projects.
Share of Planned Electricity Produced from RE
Castalia CREF Renewable Energy Island Index and Marketplace
We would like to hear from you; so please let us know if you have further questions/comments about the CREF 2017.
