US initiative financing the largest solar energy facility in the Caribbean

KINGSTON, Jamaica, Monday June 29, 2015 – The United States is financing the construction of the first utility scale photovoltaic power plant in Jamaica.

Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) – the US Government’s development finance institution – recently signed a US$47 million financing agreement with WRB Enterprises for development of the 20 megawatt solar plant in York Town, in the southern parish of Clarendon.

The US$60 million Content Solar Limited (CSL), being built by WRB Enterprises, will supply power to the national grid. It is the second such project in Jamaica, to be financed by OPIC, under the United States Government’s Caribbean Energy Security Initiative, launched by Vice President Joe Biden in June of last year.

The power plant will assist the country in achieving its target of increasing renewable power generation from about seven per cent to 15 per cent by 2020. The development will make Jamaica the site of the largest solar energy facility in the Caribbean.

“It is of strategic national importance to Jamaica, and is one of three successfully selected proposals from 24 other projects, which competed to provide a total of 115 megawatts of renewable energy to the Jamaican power grid,” Minister of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining Phillip Paulwell said at the signing ceremony.

He said that the investment adds momentum to the Government’s move to diversity the country’s energy landscape and encourage clean energy.

Paulwell said too much is being spent on the importation of expensive fuels, while Jamaica has an abundance of renewable resources, such as rivers and streams with hydro-electric potential, as well as intense sunlight all year round.

Last year, US$2 billion was spent to import oil into the country.

“We do not intend to remain, forever, hostage to the vagaries of imported fossil fuel,” the minister stressed.

Chief of Staff for OPIC, John Morton, commended the Government’s move to increase investments in renewable energy.

He noted that solar power investments is the future of energy generation and “you are moving faster than most others, proving that it can be done cost effectively”.