Letter of the Day | Energy delusion in a post-Venezuela world

THE EDITOR, Madam:

As an electrical engineer who has spent 40 years involved in the electrical energy sector from fossil fuel, wind, solar, lithium batteries and pumped storage hydro, I am compelled to raise a red flag.

The events of January 3 in Venezuela have tripped a geopolitical circuit breaker that no amount of diplomatic resetting can fix.

The capture of Nicolás Maduro and the possible subsequent US administration of Venezuela’s energy sector signals the definitive end of the PetroCaribe-type eras.

The ‘New Venezuela’ will not be a benevolent partner offering low-interest loans; for at least a significant part of the future from now on it will be a US-managed asset designed to stabilise North American markets, not Caribbean economies.

We cannot wait for a new discount window to open. The “improbability” of achieving our Vision 2030 renewable targets, cited by researchers as early as 2024, has hardened into a physics-based certainty of failure unless we pivot immediately.

We are attempting to run a 21st-century digital economy on a grid rapidly losing its mechanical inertia. The solution is not more policy papers, but hard engineering: the ‘New Venezuela’ reality demands we try to forge a ‘Petro-CARICOM’ alliance with Guyana for supply security, while simultaneously deploying pumped hydro storage to turn water into batteries and small modular reactors to provide the zero-carbon baseload our solar panels cannot and, needless to say, repeal the Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection Act, 2015: making nuclear generation of power “Illegal” as stated by the current administration.

We must start treating energy policy as a matter of national survival. The era of engineered self-reliance must begin, or the lights will go out.

PETER WRIGHT