Barriers and solutions to implementing renewable energies on Caribbean islands in respect of technical, economic, political, and social conditions

The electricity supply on most of the Caribbean islands is based on diesel power plants. At the same time the Caribbean area has a great natural potential for using renewable energies for power generation. The expensive and high polluting current power generation technologies could be substituted by renewable energy plants. Despite the advantages of renewable energies their implementation level is relatively low. Within this PhD project the barriers to implementing renewable energies on Caribbean islands are analyzed. For this analysis island energy supply system simulations and empirical socio-economic studies are conducted.

This project targets two major goals: Firstly, the techno-economic potential for implementing renewable energies on 62 single Caribbean islands should be determined. Secondly, barriers blocking this potenial should be identified, evaluated, and matching solutions should be derived.