September 2015 Issue Business View Caribbean

70 September 2015 - Business View Caribbean Caribbean LED Lighting Inc. How many companies does it take to change a light bulb? According to Jim Reid, the Founder and Chairman of Caribbean LED Lighting Inc. in Barbados, the Carib- bean region has some of the highest electricity costs in the world – largely due to most of the islands’ de- pendence on expensive and imported fossil fuels. At Caribbean LED Lighting, he and his team of engineers, production workers, marketers, and technical support people are on a mission to bring those costs down – way down, if at all possible. In 2011, Reid chose Barbados to launch his company because he realized that the region had a dire need for technologies that would help reduce its consump- tion of hydrocarbons for the generation of electricity. “Electricity is generated through oil,” Reid explains, “and of course, we all know what happens with oil. It goes up and down, but generally trends upwards. LED technology is one of the fastest and most effective ways to reduce consumption. Energy savings on LED can be up to 90 percent of energy consumed. We had the technology. We were looking for a market for it. And that’s why we came to the Caribbean.” LED - Light-Emitting Diode Lights - are energy savers.