Dear Editor,
The Editorial `Rebooting Amaila Falls Hydropower Project’ (SN, 26th July 2021) says that the democratically elected PPP/C Government of Guyana is keen to embrace Hydroelectricity and the natural gas (gas-to-shore pipeline project) to produce 465 MW of electricity. The cost of the Hydroelectric Scheme was about US$800m (but would have risen by now). The cost of the gas-to-shore pipeline project is about US$900m. This gives a total cost of US$1700m to provide 465 MW of electricity (it is unclear if the cost of the gas-to-shore pipeline project includes the cost of generating 300 MW of electricity).
Has the democratically elected PPP/C Government looked closely at solar electricity where the cost of 500 MW solar electricity would be in the region of US$1000m? Plus, we can build 50 times 10 MW solar farms to de-risk. We can certainly build, as a priority, a 10 MW Solar Farm so that we can assess the viability of Solar Electricity as an alternative. The cost would be about US$20m.
Is the PPP/C Government seriously considering spending 25% of Guyana’s GDP on Hydropower and gas-to-shore pipeline when we could be spending far less on solar power?
Yours faithfully,
Sean Ori
