The En­er­gy Min­is­ter has called on the man­age­ment of com­pa­nies on the Pt Lisas in­dus­tri­al es­tate which op­er­ate in­ef­fi­cient plants to "get their act to­geth­er" and re­duce the waste of the coun­try's valu­able en­er­gy re­sources. Speak­ing at last Fri­day's launch of the En­er­gy Ser­vice Com­pa­ny (ES­CO) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion com­mit­tee at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel, Port-of-Spain, Kevin Ram­nar­ine said an au­dit of the com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing on the es­tate showed that in cer­tain cas­es, there was an in­ef­fi­cient use of nat­ur­al gas as a feed­stock for the pro­duc­tion of am­mo­nia and methanol. He said: "An au­dit of am­mo­nia, methanol and iron and steel fa­cil­i­ties on the Pt Lisas in­dus­tri­al es­tate re­vealed that in­vest­ment in en­er­gy-sav­ing tech­nolo­gies in the sum of US$13 mil­lion, if im­ple­ment­ed, could yield sig­nif­i­cant an­nu­al sav­ings of US$2.8 mil­lion or equiv­a­lent to a pay­back pe­ri­od of less than five years on av­er­age."

The new ES­CO board is chaired by Richard Oliv­er, act­ing deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs.

In pre­sent­ing the board with their in­stru­ment of ap­point­ment, Ram­nar­ine promised that in 2012, the min­istry will be plac­ing greater em­pha­sis on re­new­able en­er­gy and en­er­gy ef­fi­ci­ce­ny. He said: "A key el­e­ment in the achieve­ment of sus­tain­abil­i­ty is the util­i­sa­tion of en­er­gy re­sources in an ef­fi­cient man­ner. Ac­cord­ing­ly, one of the key pol­i­cy mea­sures be­ing es­poused is the adop­tion of en­er­gy ef­fi­cient op­er­a­tions and prac­tices with em­pha­sis on the ma­jor en­er­gy con­sum­ing sec­tors. The ra­tio­nale for en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy is three-fold-in­creased en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, in­creased so­cial ben­e­fit and greater eco­nom­ic growth."

Ram­nar­ine said his trip to In­dia ear­li­er this month showed him that coun­try's lead­er­ship in re­new­able en­er­gy, in par­tic­u­lar, so­lar en­er­gy. He promised greater cor­po­ra­tion be­tween the Asian eco­nom­ic gi­ant and T&T. The min­is­ter said staff from the Min­istry of En­er­gy had al­ready ben­e­fit­ted from train­ing in re­new­able en­er­gy in In­dia and that co-opo­ra­tion will grow. Ram­nar­ine not­ed that the great­est users of en­er­gy in the coun­try were the in­dus­tri­al, pow­er gen­er­a­tion and trans­porta­tion sec­tors. With re­spect to the in­dus­tri­al sec­tor, he talked about greater ef­fi­cien­cy and the mod­erni­sa­tion of plant and equip­ment.

On the is­sue of the pow­er sec­tor, he said al­most 100 per cent of the coun­try's pow­er was gen­er­at­ed by the clean­er-burn­ing nat­ur­al gas and there was a move now away from sin­gle cy­cle gen­er­a­tion to com­bined cy­cle that will re­move in­ef­fi­cien­cy in the sys­tem. Ram­nar­ine al­so spoke of more ef­fi­cient en­er­gy use in pub­lic trans­port. "The Min­is­ter of Trans­port and I are work­ing on a project that will see the en­tire fleet of Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) bus­es turned in­to com­pressed nat­ur­al gas bus­es. This will re­quire cer­tain ad­just­ments at the PTSC com­pound, but it is a project that we are work­ing on as we seek to re­duce the green­house gas emis­sions."