Renewing his vows to reduce the territory’s reliance on fossil fuels, Gov. John deJongh Jr. signed a memorandum of understanding Wednesday with the U.S. Department of Interior, formally establishing the territory’s role in the Energy Development in Island Nations (EDIN) pilot project.
The agreement, signed at a meeting between representatives from U.S. island territories and federal officials from Interior and the Department of Energy in Golden, Colo., Wednesday, “includes the U.S. Virgin Islands in a global partnership that seeks to develop energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies within small island nations in the Caribbean and the Pacific,” according to a Government House statement.
On stage in Colorado Wednesday, deJongh set a goal to reduce the territory’s consumption of fossil fuel-derived energy by 60 percent in just 15 years -- by 2025.
“There is no reason why the Virgin Islands cannot be the leaders in clean-energy deployment in the Caribbean,” deJongh said, according to the statement.
The government statement did not say how two government-proposed power plants using a high percentage of oil-derived petroleum coke would fit into those goals, however.

By signing the memorandum and participating in EDIN, deJongh won promises from the Department of Energy to provide technical and economic assistance to help the territory reach the goals set out in the initiative.
The U.S. Virgin Islands was singled out for the EDIN pilot project last spring. The project, led by experts from New Zealand, Iceland and the United States, whose mission it is to find alternatives to oil for island populations, is funded by $31 million in federal stimulus money.
DeJongh pursued participation in EDIN as a way to help achieve the objectives of the V.I. Comprehensive Energy Strategy developed by the V.I. Energy Office, according to the government statement.
WAPA Executive Director Hugo Hodge Jr. outlined other EDIN-sponsored initiatives, including the deployment of distributed solar energy and power grid interconnection with neighboring Puerto Rico.
“We hope to have some significant wins via this partnership between the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Energy,” said Hodge, who also attended the meeting and workshops in Colorado, according to the statement.
Representatives from WAPA, V.I. Energy Office, Public Services Commission, UVI and various other public agencies, as well as Sens. Louis Patrick Hill and Craig Barshinger, also attended.
Officials from Hawaii and Kodiak, Alaska, also presented case studies on how their islands have approached deployment of renewable energy, the statement said. Other workshops included promoting green jobs and industries, landfill gas conversion, financing strategies for renewable energy and energy efficiency, advanced vehicles and fleet planning, energy-efficient building design, and energy savings performance contracts.
Recently, as part of the federal partnership, representatives from EDIN, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and federal Department of Energy surveyed St. Thomas and St. Croix for the best places to locate wind turbines for wind-generated power that would feed a stable grid, if one were to be developed in the territory.
In coming weeks, eight or nine sites will be outfitted with wind-speed-measuring devices called anemometers that will collect wind data over the next year.
Once industry-standard data is complete, the group pledged to help WAPA and the V.I. Energy Office assemble a request for proposals from industry.
The whole process—from the start of data collection through plant construction and finally to the actual delivery of utility-scale wind power to WAPA—could take as little as three or four years, EDIN experts said late last year.
The governor has been in Colorado since Monday at the invitation of the Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratories. He is scheduled to return to the territory on Thursday.