Above: Goldeneye in Jamaica

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Caribbean hotels will receive a boost from the Inter-American Development Bank, which is granting $2 million to help the tourism sector in eight regional countries improve their energy efficiency.

The four-year project will finance energy audits for hotels in participating countries looking to cut their costs through energy efficiency.

According to the IDB, many hotels have the potential to cut water consumption by 50 percent and overall energy consumption by 30 to 50 percent.

The bank will help the countries bundle hotels’ carbon emissions, along with helping them certify those emissions using UN carbon financing instruments.

“In this way, multiple hotels will be able to access carbon markets at once, reducing the transaction costs of the project” said Christiaan Gischler, project team leader at the IDB. “This will make it easier for participating hotels to sell carbon credits to offset the costs of their efficiency investments, while promoting green tourism and helping market the Caribbean as one of the main “low carbon tourism” destinations.”

With the help of counterpart funds provided by the Bahamian, Barbadian and Jamaican governments, as well as regional organizations, the total project grant reaches about $5.14 million.

The countries involved include the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad, Suriname, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Guyana.