Last Thursday, the Mauritius Employers? Federation hosted a workshop on the theme: ?Sustainable island: opportunities to seize?. Although the discussions were not always stimulating, it was a worthy enough initiative. During the workshop I met several representatives of internationally-recognised firms who are pining to put their expertise and resources at the service of the country. Many of them, however, deplored that the authorities have been dragging their feet when it comes to promoting renewable energy.

One of them likened the whole process to ?banging my head against a brick wall?. One has to wonder why the promoters of such projects are treated with such disdain whereas other projects of far more dubious merit are allocated contracts without even needing to submit themselves to the most basic exercise of transparency, namely a tender exercise.

Critics say that renewables will never replace base-load providers like coal. This argument, it turns out, plays a little too conveniently into the hands of fossil fuel supporters (not a bunch of people renowned for their strong sense of social and environmental ethics). Tim Flannery neatly dispels this myth in his groundbreaking book «The Weather Makers : our changing climate and what it means for life on Earth». He argues that wind power, in particular, has been unjustly vilified.

?While the wind does not blow at the same location with consistent strength, if you take a regional approach it is fairly certain that it will be blowing somewhere. Thus the more widely dispersed wind turbines are, the more they come to resemble base-load providers like coal.

One implication of this is that there are lots of redundancy in wind generation, for often there will be several turbines lying idle for each one at capacity. The high redundancy of wind, however, is somewhat offset by high reliability: wind turbines break down far less frequently, and they are cheaper to maintain than coal-fired power plants.?

It?s also worth noting that the costliness of wind power has been greatly exaggerated. Sure, the upfront installation cost is high but so is that of any big project. Over time however, wind farms become cheaper and cheaper because the raw material they use is completely free. The same cannot be said for coal, especially in a world fraught with economic and political uncertainty. Consequently, every day that passes without harnessing renewable energies costs the country a bundle.

More shockingly still, by building coal-fired power stations and the like we are binding ourselves to ?dirty? infrastructure for the next twenty years (at the very least). It?s not like the government can say that renewable energies have not been tried and tested. In La Réunion, Mauritius has a wonderful textbook study in the widespread use of renewable energies. Several high-level government delegations have visited the sister island where they witnessed firsthand the peerless potential of renewable energies. A fast track committee was set up to grant IRS permits. Why can?t the same be done for renewables? If the government does not act swiftly to actively promote clean energy projects then the only time when it?ll be able to call itself green will be when it talks about the colour behind its ears.