June 15, 2009 — The V.I. Energy Office wants to know what residents think about its draft Energy Strategy document. To find out, it will hold a series of meetings that begin Tuesday at the University of Virgin Islands Cafetorium on St. Croix.
On Wednesday the meeting moves to St. Thomas at UVI's First Floor Administration and Conference Center, formerly called the Harvey Building. Thursday is St. John's turn, with the meeting to be held at the Legislature building.
The meetings run from 6 to 9 p.m. at all locations.
The draft document outlines the territory's energy policy for government, businesses and residents for the next decade, Energy Office spokesman Don Buchanan said.
"People's input will tell us what we need to emphasize," he said.
According to an Energy Office press release, the Energy Strategy aims to "ensure the availability of affordable and reliable energy for the future and maintain a high standard of living for the citizenry." Its main objectives are to reduce energy costs, increase efficiency of energy use and production, increase fuel diversity and reliability, and promote clean energy.
The document has 31 strategies to meet those goals. They cover areas such as energy efficiency, alternative energy and specific issues such as reducing the V.I. Water and Power Authority's transmission- and distribution-system losses and adopting an updated Tropical Energy Code.
Those strategies also includes such items as investigating options for low-cost, energy-efficient construction, requiring that government departments as well as WAPA replace vehicles with hybrid electric vehicles, train the workforce for "green-collar" jobs, and cut losses in WAPA's transmission and distribution lines.
The document is filled with little tidbits of information. For example, it says that the median income across the territory runs $33,474 a year. And residents pay nine percent of their income for electricity. For the same median income on the mainland, residents pay just more than two percent of their annual income for electricity.
The Energy Strategy document was done by the Southern States Energy Board, an organization made up of energy offices from that region as well as the Virgin Islands.
Buchanan said it was funded to the tune of $50,000 from a U.S. Interior Department grant. He said that Interior requested the territory come up with an Energy Strategy.
He asked that people who plan to comment at the meetings also put them in writing.
The Energy Strategy is available at vienergy.org. Buchanan requested that people print out a copy of the 67-page draft before attending the meeting because the Energy Office is trying to save on printing costs.
For more information, call the Energy Office at 774-3320 on St. Thomas and St. John or 773-1082 on St. Croix.
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