The largest collection of Caribbean electricity company CEOs to attend a Carilec (Caribbean Electric Utility Services Corp) conference met up in Hamilton this week they were shown what may be the future of non-polluting electricity production — a pebble.

The size of a tennis ball, the "pebble" was a graphite encased piece of nuclear material that, within a few years, is to be used to produce electricity through an advanced gas-cooled nuclear reactor.

The reactors will be so small that two, producing almost twice the current output of the Belco power plant, would fit inside the Princess Ballroom of the Hamilton Princess Hotel.

Keynote speaker Dr. Anthony Knap, president of the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Studies, held up one of the pebbles as he rounded off an opening address to 90 electricity utility company executives.

During the three-day conference, which concludes on Wednesday, delegates will discuss topics ranging from oil market prices, regulations and new technology. A large part of the focus will be on renewable energy sources and climate change.

A tour of the Belco operation and the BIOS station at St. George's to learn more about planned ocean current generation system, due to go online in 2009 and provide energy to Belco, is scheduled for tomorrow.

Dr. Knap's keynote address focused on global climate change, the effects of pollution, and the advent of alternative energy production methods.

He held up the tennis ball-sized "pebble", which is actually a nuclear reactor fuel pellet, as he described the pebble bed modular reactor being developed as a prototype in South Africa, which will be small enough to fit two inside the hotel's ballroom, but powerful enough to deliver 150Mw of power each. For comparison Belco's power plant produces 159Mw using 12 diesel engines and nine gas turbines.

"Climate is one of the biggest drivers of energy price in the world. Having an understanding of it is something that every business needs to have," said Dr. Knap.

He said the world's climate was changing, but the question was whether it was a natural phenomenon or the effect of man-made pollution.

"Small island states create very little of the problem, yet we are the most vulnerable."

One of the biggest greenhouse gases from energy production and consumption is carbon dioxide. It forms 0.036 percent of the atmosphere and without that percentage the world would be 15 degrees Centigrade cooler, but too much and the temperatures start rising.

The US was currently the biggest producer of carbon dioxide pollution but would be overtaken by India and China on current trends, Dr. Knap said, adding that on current predictions the world's climate is predicted to rise 2 to 5C during this century.

The world's oceans are the biggest reservoir of heat, he said. "There is more heat in the surface one-metre of the oceans than in the whole atmosphere. The ocean is the driver of the climate."

And the biggest element of rising sea levels was thermal expansion of the water itself, with predictions of sea levels rising between 20cm and 60cm each year between 1990 and 2095. That figure would be greatly impacted if there was a sudden melting of the ice caps.

Into the picture, Dr. Knap told the electricity CEOs, was the effect of a warmer world with the sea at lower latitudes become more saline and the warmer oceans creating more frequent powerful, sub-hurricane force wind storms.

Presenting possible solutions, Dr. Knap listed cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions, iron fertilisation of the oceans and new, cleaner alternative energy sources.

Fertilising the oceans with iron would promote sea plant growth and help "lock in" carbon from the atmosphere, however a potential problem with that idea is the risk of upsetting the marine eco-system of the oceans.

Pumping cold water from the ocean depths to cool the surface of the sea would also be prohibitive because of the astronomical number of pumping stations needed.

But clean energy production systems, such as wind power, power station emission 'scrubbers', wave energy and nuclear power were options outlined by Dr. Knap.

It was then the BIOS boss produced a graphite-encased pebble that would be used as a fuel source in a new generation of gas-cooled nuclear generators that would heat inert or semi-inert gases, such as helium to drive turbines and transfer heat directly.

A prototype reactor is currently being built in South Africa.

The electricity utility CEOs are to spend today and tomorrow sharing information, exchanging ideas and offering solutions for power generation across the Caribbean region.