MID team confronts oil scarcity

During the last 7 days, a new stage of the Maurice Ile(s) Durable(s) policy process has got under way. The working groups for the 5 focal areas (energy, environment, employment, education and equity) have had their first of four sessions. We are participating in the one on energy which covers demand (transport, industry, homes, lifestyles, etc) as well as supply (moving away from fossil fuels). We will provide you with progress reports and ask you to share your views so that we can feed them back to the working group. This is a national experiment in participatory democracy and your voices count.

One important issue that was raised (quite vocally by one participant) is the scarcity of oil. It was pointed out that although our government acknowledges this reality, few strategies are being put in place to deal with it.

Energy action plan

The Ministry of Energy and Public Utilities has published a draft of its Energy Strategy 2011-2025 Action Plan (to meet the conditions attached to a Rs 1.4 billion grant from the EU). It contains some praiseworthy elements such as setting minimum efficiency standards for electrical appliances and the installation of photovoltaic panels on schools. However, these “green” intentions are dwarfed by plans to install 100MW of coal generation by 2015 with a further 100MW of coal or liquid natural gas by 2023. With today’s baseload (i.e. minimum) demand of some 200MW already covered by the bagasse/coal independent power producers, one has to question why so much more baseload (efficient but relatively inflexible) power stations are necessary.

The great wall of Quatre-Bornes

[Contributed by Bruno Savrimootoo]

Movement Pavillion Libre (MPL) in collaboration with the Forum Citoyen Libre (FCL) – Georges Ahyan, is strongly opposing the project of enclosing the public green space of Le Pavillion Quatre-Bornes (Next to the Roland Delaitre Swimming Pool) since the works started back on the 10th March following its stop at the end of last year amid continuous protestations including daily symbolic protest marches from members of the public. (See l’Express).