Haiti's Energy Crisis, Before and After the Earthquake

Earthquake embattled Haiti continues to require search and rescue efforts and recent news reports are showing the desperate need to disburse food, water, and emergency medical attention. The aftermath has also seen increased violence, looting, and unrest, making all efforts to help more difficult. This natural disaster provides an opportunity to help rebuild Haiti's infrastructure. A stronger, more abundant power production could lay the ground work for Haiti to grow, and even prosper as a tourist attraction one day.

In industrialized countries, a week after an earthquake of the magnitude Haiti experienced the power would likely have already been restored to mission critical facilities. However, Haiti has a long way to go before electricity can be restored; the energy profile of Haiti is as challenging its economic conditions.

The poorest country in the Western hemisphere produces and uses very little energy. According to the United States Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration, Haiti's primary energy source is electricity. The country consumes 330 million kilowatt-hours (kWh), about the total amount of electricity of 30,000 US households. Haiti has no petroleum production, refinery capacity, or reserves. It imports the 12.4 thousand barrels per day it consumes. There is no coal production, import, export, or consumption. There is no natural gas production, consumption, import, export, or reserve.

Electricité d'Haïti (EDH) is the national electric company of Haiti. It was created in 1971 and maintains a monopoly for electricity generation, transmission and distribution. EDH, aka Electricity of Haiti, is governed by the Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Communications (MTPTC). There are currently three large thermal plants and one hydroelectric plant serving the metropolitan area and some smaller thermal and hydroelectric plants in the provinces.

Outages are so common some reports indicate households with power typically received only 10 hours of electricity each day. Other sources say that statistic is more like 2 to 8 hours per day with some outages lasting days at a time. The combination of the people of Haiti being so poor many can't afford electricity coupled with an extensive wait time for EDH to process new connection requests resulted in a large number of illegal connections for stealing energy.

Many organizations and companies have been working with various groups in Haiti in the last decade to bring about improvements. In an attempt to organize improvement efforts the MTPTC, EDH, and Bureau of Mines and Energy with the support of the International Agency for Atomic Energy (IAEA) developed the Haiti Energy Sector Development Plan for 2007 through 2017. Here are a handful of the statistical from a study done in 2006 for the Haiti Energy Sector Development Plan.

*Port-au-Prince has 45% access rate

The plan lists the objectives of the government to improve the energy sector. But the specific objectives for electricity show how low the service quality was in Haiti because the new targets would be considered unacceptable by industrialized country standards. One objective is to maintain electrical service for at least 12 hours per day in Port-au-Prince and in the rest of the country. Another is to increase the billing rate from 47% to 75% in the next 15 years. The plan indicates that “the majority of the grids are old and unreliable, and the rate of countrywide electrification is low, the rate of losses is very high, and consequently, the rate of billing is very low.” The plan outlines several actions to take to make improvements.

The 54-page plan can be viewed online at: http://www.bme.gouv.ht/energie/National_Energy_Plan_Haiti_Revised20_12_2006VM.pdf

Whether the Haiti Energy Sector Development Plan can continue to be used for organizing and guiding decision-makers, or another effort developed, is yet to be determined. Based on the responses to UtiliPoint's series of articles on the United Nations Climate Change talks in Copenhagen (COP15) in December, the opinions as to how best restore or newly build the power infrastructure in Haiti will be wide-ranging within the United States, let alone among the countries contributing resources to the relief effort.

Clearly the pressing issue for today is continuing the effort to save lives in Haiti. That effort itself requires significant amounts of energy that will be sourced by imported fuel and generator power. But as the effort moves from rescue to rebuild, the Haitian energy infrastructure needs will need to be addressed. As industrialized countries have found, there is a direct correlation in a country's energy supply and its economy performance. Hopefully sufficient funds will be there to give Haiti a real opportunity at improving their economy by making the necessary investment in the energy infrastructure.