Political delegations from several small Caribbean islands who gathered this week on British tycoon Richard Branson’s private isle committed Thursday to working with his renewable energy nonprofit and move at a faster pace to cut their dependence on fossil fuels.
Branson, the billionaire entrepreneur who is CEO and founder of the Virgin Group of companies, which includes an airline and media properties, said it’s time for Caribbean governments “to cut through all the red tape” and embrace their deep resources in renewable energy such as solar and wind. He made the comments on the last day of a three-day meeting of political and business leaders on his roughly 69-hectare Moskito Island in the British Virgin Islands archipelago.
The 10 Island Challenge of the Carbon War Room, the nonprofit Branson co-founded, is encouraging islands to transition to clean energy and get as carbon-neutral as possible. Small Caribbean nations including St. Lucia, Dominica and St. Kitts and Nevis have committed to working with the group to focus on embracing clean energy technologies. The nonprofit has already been working with Aruba.
Photo: Bloomberg
“We’re trying to remove the roadblocks to just getting on and doing it,” Branson told AP on Moskito, where roughly 100 politicians, public officials and businessmen discussed clean energy technologies and drank shots of coconut water beneath a tent set up on a tennis court.
The Carbon War Room says it will provide countries with assistance in attracting top engineering companies and financiers. It will also help with a request for proposals for future projects such as improving energy efficiency in hospitals.
Jose Maria Figueres, a former Costa Rican president who is now the president of the Carbon War Room, said a major objective is to lower the cost of energy in a region which has one of the world’s highest power costs. He said import-dependent islands pay high rates of 35 to 55 cents per kilowatt hour, “crippling their economies, rendering them uncompetitive, and not allowing for job creation to take place,” he said.
“You turn that around by moving to renewables because what we have is wind and sun,” Figueres said.
Punishing electricity costs that are as much as five times more expensive than prices in the US and a lack of energy security have long been major concerns in the scattered islands of the Caribbean. The sun-splashed, wind-swept region derives nearly all of its electricity from plants that burn imported oil and diesel.
The prime ministers of St. Lucia, St. Kitts & Nevis and Dominica were among the attendees hosted by Branson.
Branson urged the various island delegations to put any political squabbles aside and focus on making serious headway with advancing clean energy in the region.
“Just move on and get it done so that two years from now people can start seeing the benefits in their energy bills,” he said.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would