A few short weeks after he became a member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat family, Dr. Devon Gardner got his feet wet at a meeting of the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) where he made a presentation on a critical proposal to the Community’s energy thrust. His rapid-fire, succinct delivery, though late in the evening, held the attention of the Region’s Trade Ministers, and elicited discussion around the table. The proposal was endorsed and a Special COTED on Energy and the Environment was recommended to ensure exploration of the full ramifications and optimum exploitations of the proposal: the establishment of a Caribbean Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (CREEE). Dr. Gardner assumed the post of Programme Manager, Energy, at the Secretariat at a time when the Community is moving resolutely to chart its sustainable energy course, which will see increasing amounts of renewable energy use and energy efficiency applications within the Region.A proud son of rural Jamaica who was always interested in the sciences, Dr. Gardner sees energy as a critical integration tool, but conversely, also as the single entity that could most significantly retard sustainable growth and resilience building within the Region, given the way the energy sector is constructed.
The bottom line is that energy is the most cross-cutting of sectors. The universe functions because of energy. If you think of everything you do – driving, cooking, seeing at nights when the sun is not available, if you need to cool yourself, anything you do – will require energy. The issue is how do you set your energy sector above to become most efficient, and, of course, cost effective? There is sometimes a trivialization of energy in an environment where energy does not cost a lot,” he said.
The energy sector is a very important component in CARICOM’s development agenda and can be found in its five-year Strategic Plan and in its Aid for Trade strategy. Dr. Gardner is charged with overseeing the broad-based, multi-country approach to growing the energy sector and his work includes attention to CARICOM-wide policies and activities as well as resource mobilization. His priorities include improving coordination and harmonization in the Region’s energy sector; mainstreaming energy issues throughout a number of critical cross-cutting sectors; and strengthening the pursuit of energy efficiency opportunities. With respect to the coordination and harmonization of the energy sector, Dr. Gardner used the analogy of an orchestra, and said that the Region should be playing from the same music sheet, but playing different instruments. There are different layers of coordination that must be occurring at the same time, Dr. Gardner pointed out. With sources of renewable energy present in all CARICOM Member States, Dr. Gardner was of the view that the Community could be energy sufficient by 2027, conditioned on whether there is a confluence of technical, financial and socio-political readiness.
It is a complex environment, but nonetheless it is an environment that has many confluences and similarities, and what the Energy Unit is trying to doing is not to impose on Member States a Regional issue per se, but to identify those areas that Member States themselves have prioritized that may have commonalities among multiple Member States,” Dr. Gardner pointed out.
The new Energy Programme Manager brings to his new portfolio a wealth of experience. Dr. Gardner holds a Ph.D., Physical Chemistry and a B.Sc., Special Chemistry, both from the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus.
I was always interested in energy, but from the nano-scale…, Dr. Garner said.
Following grad-school, the interest in energy led him to a research group. There, his interest in the application side of energy was peaked, and this led him to understand the challenges in the energy sector as whole. He eventually gravitated to more macro-scale type analyses, and into mainstream energy.
I understand energy from the level of the electronics and particle interaction all the way up to the macro scale at universe interaction. So I have a good understanding of the entire thing…” he said.
(The above is an extract of a wide-ranging interview Dr. Gardner granted to the Communications Unit of the CARICOM Secretariat. Please continue to check CARICOM Today or caricom.org for updates)
