Anguilla was among other regional islands involved in discussions in St. Maarten on Monday, October 8, on geothermal energy – a means of generating clean and sustainable energy from the heat of the earth.
“The St. Maarten Government is leading a project for geothermal energy through the sub-region, creating a network with the producers which would include St. Kitts-Nevis, Statia and Saba,” Mr. Banks told reporters. “The discussions were in terms of a project that is being put together for financing the exploration and development of geothermal energy and having to buy in from islands like Anguilla, French St. Martin, Dutch St. Maarten and St. Barths to be a part of the process.”
He observed that “once a geothermal plant goes into production, it is important for the neighbouring islands to have this project as one of their alternative sources of energy so that we can continue to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.”
Mr. Banks continued: “We had several discussions about how this would work. A number of the geothermal energy producing countries were at the meeting including St. Kitts-Nevis, Saba and Statia. They are all at different levels of exploration and development. The whole idea is that the more we can reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, and the more sources of energy that is sustainable, reliable and not intermittent, the better off we will be. This would be in terms of being able to offer our customers and consumers the right energy and maintain prices that are more robust over the long term.”
Chief Minister Banks added: “This is the first part of the discussions. We have a year in the process to go through and decide exactly how the agreement would be put together. There is no commitment yet. The only commitment is to have further talks about it, but eventually we hope that something would come out of it so that geothermal energy could be another source of positive solutions to our concerns about the over-dependency on fossil fuels.”
