The Caribbean Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (CCREEE) and the Korea Energy Agency (KEA) have signed a two-year memorandum of understanding (MoU) to cooperate on supporting the energy transition within the Caribbean.

The Executive Director of the CCREEE, Dr. Gary Jackson, signed the MoU along with Dr. Sang-Hoon Lee, President and Chief Executive Officer of the KEA, within the margins of the Forty-Fifth Regular Meeting of the CARICOM Conference of Heads of Government in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The MoU is anchored within the CARICOM-Korea partnership, which, since 2007, has been supporting cooperation in various fields. Since 2015, the partnership has been gradually intensifying its focus on climate change and related areas, such as sustainable energy.

In commenting on the MoU, Executive Director Jackson said that partnerships, such as this one with the KEA, are important to the CCREEE because the Centre is fully self-funded and relies heavily on contributions from development partners to finance its operations and programmes. Furthermore, he stated that the options and opportunities for the region, in general, and the Centre, in particular, to learn lessons and gain insights from South Korea and the KEA were invaluable to the sustainable energy aspirations of the region and would contribute positively to the notional global ambitions for achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. 

“Energy security has long been a challenge for Caribbean countries. But advanced technologies are driving change within the energy sector around the globe and innovative technologies are transforming the way energy is sourced, converted, delivered, and consumed. Improvements in the performance and reductions in the pricing of renewable and new storage technologies, as well as advances in digitalisation, are enhancing our capabilities to make prospects for the once elusive energy security within the region attainable,” he stated.

Under the MoU, the CCREEE and KEA will, in addition to sharing information and intelligence and exchanging knowledge and expertise, cooperate through joint actions on renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy management, and other areas that support the energy transition. These initiatives are expected to include feasibility studies and pilot projects in emerging areas such as marine renewable energy, grid modernisation, smart distributed energy systems, and electric vehicles. Even as the region seeks to pursue initiatives, programmes, projects, and activities that will yield global carbon abatement benefits, the focus is on ensuring that the actions simultaneously fulfil the longer-term economic and climate resilience goals. 

The Barbados-based CCREEE is a CARICOM specialised agency that was established in April 2018 with an energy-exclusive mandate to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency investments, markets, and industries within the region. Established in 1980, the KEA is a governmental agency of South Korea that has a mandate to, among other things, improve energy efficiency in the industry, transportation, and building sectors, and promote renewable energy. Together, as public institutions of excellence that are seeking to improve the situation of the people and enterprises within their respective spheres of influence through field-oriented innovative solutions, effective communication, and partnerships on the just transition to secure and resilient energy systems, the two parties view strengthened cooperation as a mutual benefit for the people of CARICOM and Korea.

ABOUT THE CCREEE

Past efforts to transition economies within countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to more sustainable energy use have exposed significant weaknesses in the design and institutional arrangements at the national levels. There is a legacy framework that is present in countries which, despite the millions of dollars in development funding spent by multiple actors over the past decades, did not yield significant results. CARICOM countries have, therefore, been at perennial risk of not achieving the sustainable energy goals and targets that they have established for renewable energy and, in some instances, energy efficiency. This was one of the major reasons that motivated the CARICOM Heads of Government to establish the CCREEE in April 2018. 

The Centre, which is headquartered in St. Michael, Barbados, is designed to directly address what is commonly referred to as an “implementation gap” within the regional sustainable energy landscape. The principal objective of the CCREEE is assisting CARICOM countries with navigating what can be best described as a competitive yet lucrative, sustainable energy investment climate. The Centre is already providing reliable and dedicated direct support to the businesses, governments, and civil-society actors within the Caribbean. By complementing and backstopping the individual and institutional capacities for energy-sector planning and sustainable-energy project implementation: (a) the development of modern, long-range plans for the energy sector; and (b) the transformation of innovative project ideas and concepts into “bankable” technical proposals and business plans, are being supported in countries, including Suriname. The expectation is that, through its dedicated, reliable, and deliberate actions, the CCREEE is providing secure and resilient energy solutions that will continually improve the competitiveness of businesses and the quality of life for citizens within the Community.