Renewable Energy Sector Development in the Caribbean: Current ...

2.4. Wind Development in the Netherland Antilles2.4.1. CuracaoDespite being sister islands Aruba and Curacao have separate governments and utilitycompanies. Electricity production and desalination on the island of Curacao began in the earlytwentieth century through a single private company. Over subsequent decades similar companiesemerged and eventually all water production, electricity generation, transmission and distributioncompanies were integrated into a single company now known as Aqualectra. Eventually, itsshares were divested, being bought in part by the state. Aqualectra is now jointly owned by thegovernment and the international Marubeni Corporation. Since its establishment however,Aqualectra has not been regulated by the government.Despite a privatized and largely unregulated monopoly within its electricity sector, Curacao wasin fact one of the first islands of the Caribbean region to experiment with the integration ofrenewable energy. During the 1980s Aqualectra conducted wind resource assessments andestablished a 3 MW wind farm in Tera Cora. Based on the wind farm’s initial production successanother 9 MW wind farm was commissioned in Playa Kanoa in 2000. This wind farm wasinitially developed by a Dutch Company but rights to its ownership have recently been bought byrenewable energy development company NuCapital. Government support for the Aqualectra andnow NuCapital projects has come in the form of rights to land for development and waivers onimport taxes for all materials imported from Europe for the construction of these wind farms.There is no official energy policy in Curacao but a policy is currently being developed throughthe Ministry of Economics and the Environment.2.4.2. ArubaCommercial electricity production in Aruba began in the 1920s with a small company whosegenerating capacity was expropriated by the government to be handed over to the Dutch ownedcorporation OGEM. Later known as N.V. Elmar, this corporation had sole control over thegeneration and distribution of electricity on island. Years later the government bought a dieselpower station with three times N.V. Elmar’s operating capacity through which the governmentestablished the state owned Water and Power Company (WEB N.V.) (N.V. Elmar, 2004).The government then established a new agreement with N.V. Elmar, unbundling electricityoperations such that N.V. Elmar would be responsible for distribution, transmission andmaintenance while WEB N.V. would be the sole generator. The OGEM consortium eventuallydissolved due to financial difficulty and since the 1990s N.V. Elmar has been a stable companywhose shares are owned by Utilities Aruba N.V., a government owned holding company. Bothgeneration and transmission capacity is thus now under state ownership.8