Skeldon power plant scouting for biomass

Businessman and President of the Central Corentyne Chamber of Commerce Mohamed Raffik, while agreeing that

the initiative will create jobs for persons in the region and that this was commendable, also told the officials bluntly that what they were trying to do was “not possible.”

After listening to the officials, Raffik turned around their figures by explaining that “it is a lot of weight and what you are trying to achieve is not possible.”

He also highlighted that the country is going “green” and SEI is looking for renewable energy but is doing so by cutting down trees. “You are talking about renewable energy but you are cutting down trees,” Raffik remonstrated.

Raffik argued that instead of the Skeldon Estate being closed by government, it could have been allowed to continue to operate and produce bagasse.

He questioned whether the plant was even factored into the government’s decision to close/privatise the estate.

He said that he believes that SEI should push for more production of bagasse.

He suggested that farmers be allowed to plant their own cane and operate their own sugar operations, as rice farmers are doing, which would see production of bagasse, sugar and employment.

SEI officials said that while some of the questions may not be for them, the harvesting of firewood is a short term plan. Duncan said that a long term plan would be to embark on planting fuel grass on cane lands. He also said, that they would encourage cane farmers who have lands to consider planting the fuel grass themselves.

Skeldon Plant The Skeldon Co-generation Plant comprises a 2×15 megawatts steam generation plant and a 10 megawatts HFO generating plant. It was commissioned in 2009 as part of the Skeldon Sugar Modernisation Project, which was the first project in Guyana to be registered with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

In April, 2015, a month before general elections, former head of the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) Winston Brassington announced that GuySuCo was selling the co-generation plant and three Wartsila power units at Skeldon to SEI, a stateowned company specially created for the purpose, at a price of US$30 million.

According to a press statement issued then, SEI was being funded with equity financing of US$5 million from NICIL, US$4 million from GPL and US$21 million in debt financing from GPL and local and international financial institutions.