News Sustainable Energy
2 min.
Bonaire’s Executive Council (Bestuurscollege) has urged Dutch Minister for Climate and Energy Policy (Klimaat en Energie) Rob Jetten to refrain from involving state-owned company Bonaire Brandstof Terminals with the Water- en Energiebedrijf Bonaire’s plan to make local production of electricity more sustainable, which could lower energy prices by several dozen percent. This was written in a letter from the Council to the Minister himself that was shown in an episode of the investigative journalistic program Zembla on Dutch television on February 17th, 2022. You can check out the complete episode here.
While Bonaire Brandstof Terminals (BBT, loosely translated as Bonaire Fuel Terminals) publicly presents itself as a local pioneer when it comes to sustainability efforts in Bonaire, the Executive Council has not witnessed this attitude during their recent talks. “The discussions between Water- en Energiebedrijf Bonaire (WEB) and BBT about how BBT can contribute to a more sustainable local production of electricity have so far not yielded any results”, can be read in the Executive Council’s letter to Minister Jetten, “Considering everything, we firmly insist on granting the WEB’s request to subsidize the sustainability plan without intervention from the BBT as soon as possible”.
What’s going on exactly?
The power production on Bonaire was part of a recent debate in the Dutch House of Representatives (Tweede Kamer) after a reference was made to a statement by the previous Dutch Minister of Finance Wopke Hoekstra about how further enhancing the sustainability of electricity production in Bonaire will have a negative impact on Bonaire Brandstof Terminal’s business model, which in turn would be the reason why the Dutch government was not ready to join Water- en Energiebedrijf Bonaire’s investment plans. The island’s Executive Council was taken by surprise by this part of the debate as they were convinced that their ambitions to make Bonaire as sustainable as possible as quickly as possible were aligned with those of the central government. Identifying BBT as the major obstacle for working towards ambitious sustainability goals, the Council is therefore asking of Minister Jetten to leave the BBT out of the equation and to continue with the sustainability plans as suggested. After all, those plans fit perfectly with the central government’s overall sustainability goals.
The Executive Council is nevertheless not against BBT in itself, it just wants to further the island sustainability ambitions and feels that this is the perfect time, considering the central Dutch government’s emphasis on a transition to a more sustainable economy. “We recognize the necessity to assure the supply of fuel for the coming years, but we strongly feel that this supply needs to be in tune with the actual need for fossil fuels”, the Council’s letter states, “And this supply needs to be sufficiently flexible that it can be adjusted to a decreasing demand for fossil fuels as a result of an increased use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar on the one hand, and the increasingly sustainable mindset on the consumer side on the other hand (the increased use of electric vehicles as modes of transport on the island is a good example of this).
The basis for this article was originally published on www.dossierkoninkrijksrelaties.nl in February 2022.
