Minister
Haydn Hughes
The Anguilla Electricity Company (ANGLEC) is the main source of electricity on the island. But there has been much talk, over the years, about embarking on solar energy to offset the cost of fossil fuel and the high bills consumers pay.
With the coming to office of the Anguilla Progressive Movement Government, Premier Dr. Ellis Webster says the talk is over and that his administration, in keeping with its election manifesto, “is very serious” about its plans for renewable sources of energy.
“We are very serious,” he affirmed. “I talk to the Minister for MICUH and Public Utilities, the Honourable Haydn Hughes, about this daily. We are going to put together a Renewable Energy Committee and to do it right away. We have been talking to different investors about this happening and about the modality – whether wind, solar or both. In terms of solar, that requires a lot of land space and we have to look at this in the context of Anguilla, and how much land space we want to use for that – or we want to do offshore wind [power]. That’s another option. It is something that we started working on before the election, and we are continuing to work with the potential investors. It is a matter of making sure that the legislation is there that allows this to happen – and then we will be moving forward with it. This is going to happen soon.”
Dr. Webster, who was speaking in a Radio Anguilla interview on Tuesday, July 29, one month after the general election, could not give a date on which to proceed on the renewable project.
“It is hard to give a specific time because of Covid-19, and the difficulty to travel,” he pointed out. “In fact, one of our potential investors is going to be in Antigua in the middle of August. The concern is whether he can come to Anguilla safely, and spend a day or two to look at the different sites that may be possible. We have to come up with that protocol as to how we deal with investors because they would not be able to follow the three negative Covid-19 tests before they are allowed to go out into the community. So we have to see how we can protect them, and the people of Anguilla, and still give them [the investors] the opportunity to come and visit.”
