Senior Minister in the Office of the President with Responsibility for Finance, Dr Ashni Singh, is urging Guyanese households and businesses to think beyond the price tag when buying appliances and building homes, stating that energy efficiency is as much an economic issue as a technical one.
Speaking at the National Seminar on Energy Efficiency (EE) and Conservation, hosted by the Guyana Energy Agency (GEA) at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre on Friday, Dr Singh said the country is at a critical juncture, where decisions made today will shape Guyana’s energy future for decades.
“Coming back after the event to retrofit, to remedy, to correct, to address issues of energy efficiency is far more complicated and far more difficult than if we were able to do this at the very beginning,” he told stakeholders during the seminar.
Guyana is currently in the middle of an unprecedented construction boom, with new hotels, factories, office complexes and residential developments going up across the country. Dr Singh believes there is no better time to get energy efficiency built into the foundation than now.
To underscore the urgency, he pointed to the scale of the country’s growth. Over the last five years, more than 104,000 jobs have been created in a population that has only just crossed one million. Every three months, an additional 10,000 vehicles are registered.
More Guyanese families own air conditioning units, refrigerators and electrical appliances, sharply increasing the country’s energy demand.
To meet that demand, Guyana is constructing a 300-megawatt gas-powered plant at Wales, which will double the country’s current generating capacity.
However, “We’re not going to be able to build 300-megawatt power plants every few years to meet an exponentially growing demand if we’re not using what we’re using efficiently as well,” he said.
Against this backdrop, Minister Singh challenged Guyanese to change the habit of judging affordability purely on upfront cost.
“A household or a householder might go in and buy an electrical appliance thinking that they’re getting the best deal by buying the cheapest air-conditioned unit or the cheapest refrigerator… but they might be buying an appliance that is cheaper to acquire but in fact over its lifetime will be considerably more expensive,” he said.
Minister Singh also stressed that conversation needs to happen at every level, from national policy down to individual households, so that Guyanese are better informed and can make wise choices.
The seminar, organised by the GEA with support from the World Bank, brought together government agencies, financial institutions, private-sector representatives, development partners, and students.
It forms part of the Caribbean Efficient and Green Energy Buildings Project, under which the World Bank is supporting Guyana in scaling up energy-efficiency investments in public buildings and strengthening regulatory frameworks.