Mike Eman ta papia sustainable energy na Bloomberg Television .d.d 27.03.2014 What made you decide to take on this? Thank you. We are an island that focuses on the quality of life we can offer our citizens, and also the quality of the experience that we can offer the tourist that visit aruba, and in our vision sustainability has become very important. Sustainable prosperity is not only about the experience we have with our material wealth, but how way translate that to a better quality of life for our citizens, and that total vision of where we want to bring the aruba -- to translate a vision from a country that can not only speak about five-star hotels, but also five-star neighborhoods, five-star schools, elderly homes, within the vision of creating sustainable prosperity, and sustainability in the sense of energy is important. A large part of our income gets invested in the import of oil and for the import of oil we spend a lot of our hard-earned currency, and by reducing our dependency on oil, we can invest in a better quality of life for our citizens. What have been some of the biggest initiatives you have been able to accomplish so far in just about two years? The wind farm impact is a 20% reduction of the need for import of oil, and also has a 20% and the total capacity of alternative energy in aruba. Adding the next wind farm, that will bring us to 40%. we are building a solar plant, the largest in the caribbean, right in front of the airport of aruba. It will have to w important functions. It will produce five percent more of our electricity with solar, and it will cover a parking garage, giving the cars shade. It is an important double objectives that we can realize with his vision. It is having a great effect that aruba is becoming an important leader, being embraced by people like richard branson, al gore, harvard university. You have a wind farm, you will work on a solar installation, and you also unveiled a streetcar that uses hydrogen fuel technology, the only one that actually does so. What is the cost associated with these huge transformations? Actually, if you look at the savings come a it is much more than the costs. The initial stage, you do some investments, but if you look at the efficiency rates that you mention in the opening, you will see that we reduced the amount of investment daily paid for our import of oil by more than 50%. but what is the upfront cost? It depends on the investment. Sometimes you have investment that we do ourselves, say a streetcar connection that cost $16 million to connect, but if you look at the quality of service provided and how fast that returns back in the growing numbers of tourists coming to aruba, or if you look at the return with the amount of payment that we have to make for having fuel or oil imported into aruba, it is a 50% drop in the impact -- import of fuel oil, an enormous impact. I want to get your take on some of the companies that are partnering with you. The denmark windmill producers, the institutions working with us, richard branson, t and o, the netherlands research and development institute -- they are also working with us. They are excited. Having a small island that is committed to being a leader in the introduction of sustainable policy and technology, they really have the opportunity. To get stuff done. Thank you so much, aruba prime minister, mike eman, good luck with your sustainability project.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 18:20:36 +0000
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