by Kevon Browne
St. Kitts and Nevis (WINN) – The Energy Unit within the Energy Ministry of St. Kitts and Nevis, in collaboration with the Small Business Development Centre, is hosting an Energy fair as part of the month of activities commemorating CARICOM Energy Month.
The Energy Fair will be held on Friday, November 17, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Independence Square, where the public can show up and get some free energy-saving light bulbs,
“[At] the Energy Fair, we’re going to have a lot of different stakeholders – like I said, we are partnering with the SBDC, so there’s going to be entrepreneurs selling their products as well at the event. The Theme, as we said, is “Accelerating Innovation, Driving Electrification”, and one of the things that we’re going to be doing at the Energy Unit booth is we’re going to have a bulb drive – the energy bulbs you were talking about; we’re going to be giving them out for free,” said Denasio Frank, Energy Officer in the Energy Unit, during the November 15 broadcast of WINN Island Tea.
The theme for the 2023 commemoration of the month is “Accelerating Innovation, Driving Electrification.”
CARICOM Energy Month aims to increase awareness of energy security within the region, focusing on the electrification of transport.
The fair is also an effort for advocacy, awareness and information gathering by the Energy Unit to understand public opinion on energy.
“So we’re going to be doing some surveys because we want to know what the public knows about the energy industry in St. Kitts, and there is a CARICOM as well… CARICOM actually had a conference in Jamaica, and it was focused mainly on the theme which is driving electrification which really focuses on electric mobility and electric vehicles. That is something that we are going to be pushing in the coming year, and we [will] have information on that at the [Energy Unit] booth as well.”
As the Energy Minister said during a panel discussion at a recent regional energy conference, St. Kitts and Nevis is working on an Electric Vehicle Policy while figuring out how to incentivise consumers to transition to Electric Vehicles while not hurting the purse of the government due to the reduction in tax revenue because of the hoped-for renewable energy transition.
