GHTA Creates Energy Retrofit Lottery Project

As the Grenada Hotel and Tourism Association (GHTA) continues to wait for the Government to give the nod to SIDSDock for our USD $500,000 proposal to cut energy consumption in half (The "GRRR" you think you read in that isn't subliminal, it's right there on the surface!) - the GHTA has turned its attention to other donors.

One of them comes via the National Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) Implementation Unit, who contacted the GHTA recently to inform us that they had funding obtained through the Caribbean Development Bank(CDB) CARTFund (which is money given by the British Government via the CDB). It's a funding mechanism quite similar to SIDS in that the CARTFund requires government endorsment to obtain funds - but fortunately in this case the grant has already been awared to the EPA Unit and depending on the quality of our propsal, we may be beneficiaries of their efforts (I have a 100% approval rating on proposals I design, so if the offer is legit, I'm confident!).

The problem is it's only XCD $100,000 which isn't a lot of money when you consider that we intend to use it to procure internationally manufactured technology.

Somthing is better than nothing!

The up-side is that my clients are likely to be able to obtain the funds much more quickly than the traditional planning-proposal-approval-disbursement cycle (which is usually 2-3 years with most donors) and my clients have been given a lot of flexibility to chose how the funding will be spent.

The Board of Directors, at my advice, have chosen to use the funds to implement one of the four energy audits already done on hotels in Grenada. It's only enough to implement a portion of an audit so it'll probably be used for the biggest energy draw (air conditioning) and it will only reach one property.

Why use this money in one place instead of design a project that could do something else?

A few reasons:

1. Four energy audits have been done on hotels in Grenada. None have been implemented.
2. There are a lot of benefits to be derrived by 'proving' that implementing the audits work
3. Showcasing the results helps engage Members who will have to maintain a high level of committment for our larger project to succeed.
4. From a project management point of view, it's better to have a line up of hotels wanting audits and to implement than to chase to get things done.
5. Having an example of the complete audit-implement-record results cycle significantly strengthens our fundraising capacity.
6. No matter which property in Grenada, energy cost savings are urgently needed so it will be money well spent.

Since the purpose of using these funds is to demonstrate the value of implementing the audits, there are only four properties who will be eligible for the funding. Added to this, if any of those four properties want this funding, they will have to be willing to be transparent enough to be used as a case study. It is possible some will be more willing than others. So - once those criteria are met, the properties names will go into a glass/jar/box (whatever) at the AGM and the name will be pulled.

It seems like a very fair and very effective way to approach things. We probably won't know for sure that the funding will be awarded until a week or two after the AGM so it'll be a bit of a muted celebration for the awardee until then, but Executive Director, Pancy Cross thought this was the most democratic way to proceeed and I whole-heartedly agree with her.