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Minister Joy Grant
"We have had presentations for many in the private sector who are currently utilizing solar and hydro and we've had a quite interesting discussion and we are going to continue that this afternoon so that we could determine what it is that the government of Belize can do or must do to make it easier for people to get investment in this sector and to also ensure that it is a profitable investment."

Reporter
"Is there anything that we can do that will have meaningful impact globally?"

Minister Joy Grant
"First I want to go back nationally because what is so important here today is to recognize that majority of what we spend as a country we spend on fossil fuels, so as I said this morning if we could reduce that bill then the amount of money we save we could use it for development projects and we all know that Belize needs to have development projects so we could employ people."

"I also want to say that this is an area that could create jobs and bring investment and foreign exchange into the country, so that our young people could look at this sector and see how they may be able to start businesses to do this. It's not symbolic at all. We are going directly to the point of a footprint. Certainly we have a very low carbon footprint, although it's always a good thing to use less fossil fuel - that is important."

The figures show that Belize uses fossil fuels for 65% of its energy needs. In 2011, 88% of fossil fuels were imported at a cost $339 million dollars. That's 10% of GDP and 11% of total imports.

The information gathered from the meetings will be used to inform policies to make investment in alternative energy sources cheaper. And that's it for 7news tonight, thanks for watching, I am Peta Gaye Levy.