Iceland partners with Dominica on geothermal energy

On the Caribbean island of Dominica all electricity production is based on imported fossil fuel, although the island has access to unutilized geothermal resources.

In the year 2007 electricity production was 86 GWh and therefore it is estimated that a 15 MW geothermal power plant could cover the electricity consumption of the Island.

On the neighbouring islands, Guadalupe and Martinique, the electricity production is approximately 860 MW, which mostly is based on fossil fuel.

With the cooperation between Iceland and the Commonwealth of Dominica it will be possible to build a 100 MW geothermal power plant where Icelandic expertise will be used during the building phase.

To make the power plant profitable it is planned to connect the electricity systems of the islands with submarine cables to transport electricity from Dominica to the two Islands, Guadalupe and Martinique. If the project goes as planned, then the inhabitants of this tree islands will be able to access clean energy at better price than is possible to day.

Founded in August 2008, the International Partnership for Energy Development in Island Nations (EDIN) said last week that the three partner nations: Iceland, New Zealand and the USA, are launching pilot projects to map and asses geothermal resources on three island nations, two of them in the Caribbean.

A team from Iceland will be working on Dominica, a US team will be working in the US Virgin Islands and their New Zealand counterpart will be working to identify and evaluate geothermal resource potential on a number of South Pacific island nations, climatechangeisreal.com reports.

Geothermal power could be a welcome relief for small island nations, offering the means to generate clean, base load power cheaply, cleanly and sustainably.

Iceland chose the Commonwealth of Dominica for its pilot project. The island is known to have “significant geothermal resources,” resources that Iceland has a lot of experience developing. Shifting its energy policy to focus on developing domestic, renewable energy resources, 99.9 percent of Iceland’s electricity is supplied from geothermal and hydropower, a transition the Icelandic team and partners on Dominica hope to reproduce for the Caribbean island.

To support the process, the United Nations Geothermal Training Programme is offering training courses to qualified candidates from Dominica.