Salt and Fresh Ponds Solar Park. Sint Maarten’s Renewable Energy Path

SINT MAARTEN (COMMENTARY – By Roddy Heyliger) - Most Governments around the world have been confronting high energy prices and developing policies and interventions to help protect the most vulnerable people in society from soaring energy costs. The business community is also being confronted with high energy costs which makes the cost of doing business more expensive and translates back to consumers who are already experiencing a high cost of living.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), fossil fuel is likely to remain expensive for some time – several years. The World Bank (WB) said the disruption in global energy markets due to the Russian-Ukraine conflict generated the biggest surge in crude-oil prices since the 1970s.

Households and businesses have been confronting a surge in energy prices since 2020.

“The World Bank’s energy price index increased by 26.3 percent between January and April 2022, on top of a 50 percent increase between January 2020 and December 2021. This surge reflects sharp increases in coal, oil, and natural gas prices. In nominal terms, crude oil prices have increased by 350 percent from April 2020 to April 2022—the largest increase for any equivalent two-year period since the 1970s,” the WB reported.

The WB further points out that, “…the prices of energy commodities are now expected to be 46 per cent higher on average in 2023.”

The WB advises countries to prioritize policies that promote energy efficiency and accelerate the transition towards low-carbon energy sources.

Country Sint Maarten needs to move post haste with its own renewable energy plan that would cut the costs of energy bringing relief to households and businesses and at the same time cutting out the country’s carbon footprint on the environment.

Businessman Louis Engel back in May presented two proposals – thinking outside the box - that could generate income for the public treasury and attract more visitors to the destination. The first project entailed a floating farm (for vegetables, fish and/or animal farming) and a fun pond attraction (eco-tourism that simulates salt mining and production) in the Great Salt Pond; and the second one was the Soualiga Orton Botanical Garden and Caribbean Sea Life Aquarium in the Simpson Bay Lagoon.

Another possibility for the Fresh Water Pond and/or the Great Salt Pond, is a floating solar park. With land scarcity, renewable energy company’s also set their sights on alternate and creative ways to deploy new solar projects.

The Salt and Fresh Water Ponds Solar Park can be Sint Maarten’s Renewable Energy Path of the future. Water bodies where large amounts of surface area is underutilized have been identified as potential solar systems.

Renewable energy company EDPR Sunseap, floating solar systems can be deployed on water bodies such as reservoirs or lakes and has the potential to generate more solar energy as compared to traditional rooftop and ground mounted solar systems.

“Solar panels floating on water can generally produce more energy as the water cools down solar panels thus allowing more solar energy to be generated. Furthermore, it can decrease the amount of water lost via evaporation, by providing shading to the water below, says EDPR Sunseap.

Some food for thought solar on water for local energy producer NV GEBE.

Roddy Heyliger