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Basseterre, St. Kitts, November 17, 2020 (SKNIS): Minister of Public Infrastructure, Deputy Prime Minister the Honourable Shawn Richards, in an effort to bring awareness to alternative sources of energy, and in particular green energy, commended the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) for the innovative conversion of its parking lot into a solar farm. He said this during his address to students of the Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College (CFBC) during a tour of the ECCB solar farm on November 17, organized by the Department of Energy as part of its celebration of Energy Month. Deputy Prime Minister Richards said, “While it is that you are able to park, if you look on top of the ceiling for the parking area, you would recognise that you have solar panels on top of it … which would enable the bank to generate most of the power that is utilised at the bank.”“As a matter of fact, the bank is producing sufficient that it would wish to sell back some of it to SKELEC and they can therefore take that additional power into the grid and begin to utilise it to power homes and businesses,” the deputy prime minister said. Deputy Prime Minister Richards also said that fossil fuels create a number of disadvantages in areas such as cost, availability, and emissions. However, he stated that “the Government of St. Kitts and Nevis is looking towards becoming greener in terms of the production and consumption of energy with the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank providing a good example of what is being done in terms of solar.” He further specified that although the Federation may have green energy, it may not get to the point where St. Kitts and Nevis relies solely on it as professionals at the St. Kitts Electricity Company (SKELEC) suggest that the best thing to have is a combination of both diesel and green energy.