Necker Island, a small Caribbean island owned by business icon Richard Branson, has signed a contract to slash its diesel fuel use by building a renewable energy-powered microgrid.
On the surface, it may look like a way for Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, and the island’s visitors to lower their carbon footprints with an expensive project that has little relevance off the island. But project leader NRG Energy said the Virgin Group will save money by making the shift, and that islands across the Caribbean similarly can reduce energy costs by installing solar.
Part of the British Virgin Islands, Necker Island generates electricity with diesel generators, as most island nations do. Because of their reliance on imported diesel and heavy fuel oil, islands have some of the highest electricity prices in the world. In that part of the Caribbean, the cost of power can exceed 40 cents per kilowatt-hour, said John Bates, an NRG Solar executive involved in the project. The national average in the mainland United States is 11 cents per kilowatt-hour.
The contract signed between Virgin and NRG Energy is different from the power purchase agreements corporations typically sign when installing large solar arrays. Instead, NRG has committed to reducing fuel consumption by at least 75 percent through a combination of onsite solar, wind and batteries. The Necker Island project is meant to be a demonstration showing that transitioning island nations off fossil fuels is feasible and cost effective. It is part of the Ten Island Renewable Challenge, an initiative organized in part by the Carbon War Room, a nonprofit co-founded by Branson to achieve gigaton-scale greenhouse gas emissions reductions.