CEOs of both Falcon and General Electrics, Chairmen of private sector companies in the Maldives, Ministers, and everyone gathered here today;
This indeed is a very happy occasion for us. Long time ago, perhaps not so long ago, in later 2007, when we finally realised that there will be a multi party election in this country, we as a party decided that we have to have a vision.
We had always been accused of not having concrete policies while we were in the opposition. So this vision thing was always haunting us. Well we had our vision. There was no doubt about that within our mind. But we did not at that moment wanted to share this visions and ideas with opposition. We felt that we have to hold on to our ideas of how we would attempt to run this country until it was firmly held that there will be a multi party election and we will be able to go to the people and convince the people that we would hopefully do better than the previous administration in attempting to govern this country.
I have here a small paper that we brought out during June 2008. When I came out with this idea of Maldives as a renewable energy showcase; that we can bring alternative energy to this country; we can become a carbon neutral country in a very short period of time; and, we should do our math to support this view, I of course was faced with a lot of opposition from now among ourselves, among our policy makers.
We were assisted by many established international political parties. We were also assisted by a number of technical people who knew a lot about the existing situation in the Maldives. And therefore, because what we were talking about was so far-fetched in their minds, they were reluctant to spell it out exactly with the words that we wanted in our manifesto. But I am fortunate to have exactly that piece of paper which is with me now. I am not surprised but I am very happy that what we are doing today maps word-to-word, inch-to-inch, dot-to-dot, comma-to-comma to what we initially thought in June 2008.
We had always understood the importance of not relying on fossil fuels. This is partly environmental consciousness, also more importantly financial prudence. We have always felt the need or the difficulties that this country has gone through because of heavy reliance on imported fuel and diesel. Unlike many other countries that have some amount of hydroelectric, nuclear energy and other conventional alternative energies, we were not so fortunate before to have any other source of energy other than just simply relying upon diesel.
Therefore, whenever there is a hitch in oil prices, whenever oil prices changes, our economy and our country and our people go into a number of difficulties. And we felt that we have to find a solution to that specific problem let alone the issue of carbon content in the atmosphere. We started exploring ideas. I came across a number of papers that were written during 2007. The Ministry of Communication, Science and Technology in 2000, when Midhath Hilmy was there, conducted a number of researches, and the data available from those research studies were widely available for us to build our future policies upon. We had a look at them and we thought that with such compelling data validating the cheery for renewable energy, the challenge for the government of Maldives is to create the results actually and visibly here in the Maldives.
So therefore, we started exploring these ideas. And in my mind, what would be the best process, or the option or the manner in which we attract international investments. Initially we tried writing to investors, we tried talking to investors, and we tried attracting them with whatever we had. Then, half way along we all realised that more important was positioning the Maldives internationally in a global context of renewable energy.
We all know that Maldives is a very vulnerable country. We have a threat of extinction due to global warming and climate change. And therefore it is important for us to position ourselves as a frontline state. We started arguing that we are a frontline state and therefore we have to be defended. We also knew very well that it would be fool hardy… it would be very difficult for us to convince for instance, developing countries especially big developing countries not to produce energy.
There are more than 400 million Indians without electricity. Now, if we want to cut the emissions, than of course, the obvious avenue available was to ask the Indian government not to produce energy. I understood and we all understood that this was an impossible task for any developing country to agree upon. We cannot ask Indian politician, Maldives’ politician or any politician not to cut ribbons. We like opening up power plants. We like cutting ribbons and telling the people that we want to provide them with electricity, power and development opportunities. That in some minds, might be a little suspicious, but actually people come to office with a idea, with an intention, with a view that you can change lives and you can make our countries better.
We came to government with these ideals. We want to spread these ideals and we want to be able to delver them and achieve our goals. So we decided that we should become a carbon neutral country. In this regard, we had already, back in 2007 and 2008, pondered upon the view that how we may be able to become carbon neutral. I have friends here with whom we had these very, very long discussions. I specifically remember one discussion in 2007 when there was just one lone voice telling me that this is achievable; this is quite feasible; that this could be done; while the rest, together in consent, was telling me that it is really quite far-fetched, ‘how can we do all these things, and this is not tested technology and this is not available and it wont work!’
We have always worked against odds and we have succeeded against odds. So therefore we always felt that this is not a reason to give up. This is all the more reason why we should be exploring how we may be able to achieve this.
Falcon and General Electrics and this, has been a god send for us. When we planned our carbon-neutral intentions, we did our maths from, I must say…I should thank Mark Lynas and Goodall, who have been very helpful. They have been providing us so many materials on how we may be able to tread alone these lines. So all in all, with everyone’s assistance we are now today able to say that we will in fact become carbon-neutral very soon. Our target is to become carbon-neutral in ten years time, but with the manner in which things are proceeding now, I really believe that we may be able to achieve these goals much earlier. At the same time, as we are doing this in Male’ atoll, we are also signing-up agreements with Suzlon – another renewable energy company to produce renewable energy in the southern atolls and distribute it there.
I understand that the Falcon Group project alone is going to save us 40 million dollars of diesel imports. So this is going to ease our balance of payments by 40 million dollars. This is going to ease electricity prices by I understand some… I am told that Falcon would be charging 1.92Rufiya per unit to Stelco, that is much lower than Stelco’s present production cost. And therefore, we will be able to maintain electricity prices as they were when we came into government.
During elections, I repeatedly said that it is not our intention to increase electricity bills and electricity prices – that we will keep electricity prices down. How we were going to do it is this – through renewable energy. We always understood how much this alternative technology has developed among us and it is waiting for to be explored.
Very soon, I believe we will see a major shift in technology. We will see another industrial revolution and in our minds those who are bold enough to venture into this new revolution would be the winners of the 21st century. And we want to position the Maldives to be the winner – not just simply a renewable energy producing country, not just simply as a carbon neutral country – but as the only place in the world where you can be able to test it, you can come and have a look at it and you can have information on it. We would like to attract many people to this country by positioning this country as a showcase for renewable energy. Now, this is a secondary goal compared to what we want to do in terms of resilience to climate change and in terms of mitigation and adaptation measures. But, we want to position this country as a showcase for renewable energy and I am very confident that we will be able to do this fairly quickly.
I congratulate Falcon and General Electrics and everyone else in the team in trying to get together the consortium, do the maths, come to Stelco and convince Stelco that it would be good for them to buy it. I also congratulate Stelco for agreeing to buy electricity at this price and for believing that it can be bought and it can be distributed and it can me channelled through their grid. I understand that what is available through this investment would be a bit more than what is required in Male’ right now. But as we have all seen in the presentation, this electricity would be available to other resorts in North Male’ atoll. So we are actually talking about reducing fuel imports by some 25% into the country. We are also talking about reducing carbon emissions by about 40% in this country. So I congratulate everyone and thank you very much for being with us, for believing in us and going forward with us.
There are some names. But I have not been given the permission to mention any names. So I will not do that. But in many instances many of these projects actually materialise because of what I believe to be the invisible third hand. There is always a third hand and you have to have faith in the third hand. It is never seen, it’s never known but it always plays. And for the third hand to come into operation, you have to have faith in the third hand. I have a lot of faith in the third hand.
Just in conclusion, I would like to say that we go to Copenhagen in a few weeks time. We understand the importance of a deal in Copenhagen. The Maldives will go to Copenhagen with a survival kit. We will explain to other countries how renewable energy can be compatible, how it can give you a return. We will tell them that we are doing exactly that in our own country, and that we are a very small country with very limited means. And therefore, there is no reason why bigger countries with more means cannot do what we are doing here in the Maldives. And therefore, it because of making our dreams a reality, we would again like to thank the investors: Falcon and General Electrics.
Thank you very much.