Guyana has ranked 24 out of 26 Latin America and Caribbean countries assessed in an index examining their ability to foster low carbon energy growth, only faring better than Suriname and Venezuela.
The report on which contains the ranking was released during the Rio + 20 summit, which is ongoing in Brazil. The ranking was done by the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Guyana’s poor ranking is in spite of the government’s promotion of its Low Carbon Development Strategy for the past four years. Jamaica, which was number 16, ranked highest among the eight Caricom countries included in the survey. Also ahead of Guyana and Suriname were Belize, Barbados, Bahamas, Haiti, and Trinidad and Tobago.
A press release from the IDB said that Latin America and the Caribbean boast extraordinary renewable energy resources and much of the region has seen strong economic growth in recent years. Still, the local clean energy sector is just beginning to gain traction, last year attracting less than 5 percent of an estimated $280 billion invested worldwide.
“For clean energy entrepreneurs, developers, and manufacturers, massive opportunities appear to lie ahead—if they can identify them. Similarly, government leaders could trigger a flood of new clean energy investment—if they can craft appropriate policy frameworks,” said the release.
To bridge these gaps, the MIF, member of the Inter-American Development Bank Group, in partnership with Bloomberg New Energy Finance, created the Climatescope, the first annual report, index, and interactive web tool focused on the clean energy market in Latin America and the Caribbean.
“The Climatescope uses 30 indicators to measure the ability of each country to attract capital to build a greener economy, aggregated into scores from 0 to 5, with 5 representing the best investing environment. The highest ranked country was Brazil, but it only scored 2.6, indicating ample opportunity for improving conditions to attract more capital for low-carbon and renewable energy capacity. Brazil was closely followed by Nicaragua, Panama, Peru and Chile,” the press release said.
Climatescope was released during the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development.
According to the release, the report is supported by the launch of a web tool which lets users see the underlying data and change weightings to produce their own versions of the index.
The web tool is available at http://climatescope.fomin. org.
“Climatescope is much more than a report,” the release quotes Nancy Lee, MIF’s General Manager as saying. “It is an interactive and dynamic tool with rich data and in-depth country profiles that allows users to change the weights of each parameter to suit their needs. We hope that the Climatescope’s unique combination of information on finance, policy, and market opportunities will have real benefits for facilitating green investment in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
Michael Liebreich, chief executive of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said that over the past three years equipment prices have dropped to the point where unsubsidized clean energy is on the verge of being competitive with fossil fuels.
“For the moment, however, the sector still needs intelligent support mechanisms, and it certainly needs a raft of unhelpful barriers to be swept away,” Liebreich said. “What Climatescope does is measure progress on these fronts on a very granular level, measure by measure, country by country. It is the first time anyone has attempted to do this, and we think it will prove of enormous value as Latin American and Caribbean countries strive to attract funds to accelerate their green growth trajectories. We commend MIF and the IDB for backing this initiative.”
