Re­gion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion is key in speed­ing up the pace of get­ting that much need­ed cap­i­tal matched with the am­bi­tion of bring­ing in more re­new­able en­er­gy, says An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III, group chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the ANSA McAL Group of Com­pa­nies.

Speak­ing on a pan­el at this week’s two-day Caribbean Sus­tain­able En­er­gy Con­fer­ence, Sab­ga said the re­al­i­ty of the re­gion is that it is in a neg­a­tive bal­ance of pay­ments sit­u­a­tion, but that cre­ates an op­por­tu­ni­ty for strate­gic in­ter­ven­tions.

“Quite specif­i­cal­ly, there are tremen­dous un­tapped re­new­able en­er­gy sources across the re­gion and the chal­lenge is each en­ti­ty or each state is in­di­vid­u­al­ly far too small to cap­i­talise on it,” Sab­ga ex­plained.

The ex­ec­u­tive echoed the theme of the con­fer­ence, which was “Col­lab­o­ra­tion for Ac­tion.”

So­lar en­er­gy has been among the is­sues at the fore­front of con­ver­sa­tions in push­ing the re­new­able en­er­gy agen­da.

With this, how­ev­er, there can al­so be some chal­lenges.

Not­ing that the ANSA McAL group has been fi­nan­cial part­ners in the de­vel­op­ment of so­lar pow­er in Bar­ba­dos via the dis­tri­b­u­tion of pan­els, Sab­ga said the is­land is “strug­gling right now” with this.

“Bar­ba­dos has over-in­vest­ed in so­lar and their grid re­quires some­thing to cap­ture that pow­er be­cause it is kind of crash­ing their grid,” Sab­ga ex­plained.

How­ev­er, he said there are sev­er­al oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties for Bar­ba­dos to ex­plore, stat­ing that coun­try has “huge” seabed as­sets which can be used for wind as­sets as he fur­ther added that the ge­ot­her­mal op­por­tu­ni­ties are al­so mag­nan­i­mous.

To achieve this Sab­ga asked, “How do we cap­ture it and plug it in­to an in­te­grat­ed grid and how do we an­chor it?”

Re­gard­ing T&T, he said there are op­por­tu­ni­ties to use green hy­dro­gen, which could not on­ly sup­port the en­er­gy sec­tor but can al­so be in­te­grat­ed to pow­er a dy­nam­ic cruise ship in­dus­try.

“We could al­so in­te­grate it and utilise it to pow­er a cruise ship in­dus­try, which could al­low the world to par­tic­i­pate, view and en­joy our re­gion col­lec­tive­ly,” Sab­ga said while adding that to make this hap­pen “a hell of a lot of in­vest­ment” is need­ed.

Em­pha­sis­ing that the un­der­ly­ing fac­tor re­mains col­lab­o­ra­tion to bring all these fac­tors to­geth­er Sab­ga sug­gest­ed that the en­abling frame­work must al­so be im­ple­ment­ed.

“If we as a re­gion are to put for­ward this project to the world, the world will in­vest in it be­cause there is a hell of a lot of cap­i­tal out there all over the plan­et look­ing for the right place to put its dol­lars, for a re­turn and to cre­ate sus­tain­able en­ter­prise,” Sab­ga said.

For the The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), a crit­i­cal area re­mains en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy, said Ver­li­er Quan–Vie, the com­pa­ny’s vice-pres­i­dent, com­mer­cial, who al­so spoke on the pan­el.

She ex­plained this is es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant from an NGC per­spec­tive giv­en the coun­try’s gas sup­ply sit­u­a­tion.

“Close to 20 per cent of NGC’s gas goes to pow­er gen­er­a­tion and when you look at the ef­fi­cien­cy of pow­er gen­er­a­tion, the con­ver­sion is any­where be­tween 25 per cent to 50 per cent of that gas is con­vert­ed and the rest goes up in the air so again con­tribut­ing to green­house gas emis­sions.

“So, for us it is work­ing close­ly with T&TEC with key stake­hold­ers and col­lab­o­rat­ing to be able to re­duce that, to get en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy by putting that gas in prod­ucts such as methanol and the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor. Col­lab­o­ra­tion is crit­i­cal for us...to be able to un­der­stand and learn and im­ple­ment it with­in our sys­tem to help de­car­bonise from an NGC per­spec­tive,” Quan–Vie ex­plained.

While in­ter­est and in­vest­ment in clean en­er­gy is en­cour­ag­ing from a cli­mate change per­spec­tive, chair­man of the T&T En­er­gy Cham­ber Jerome Dook­ie is main­tain­ing that achiev­ing the ob­jec­tive of re­duc­ing green­house gas emis­sions does not mean aban­don­ing oil, gas and petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­tries.

Not­ing that oil and gas is at the heart of three Caribbean economies, Guyana, Suri­name and T&T, Dook­ie said fos­sil fu­els con­tin­ue to be the pri­ma­ry source of en­er­gy in every coun­try in the Caribbean, de­spite am­bi­tious plans for in­tro­duc­ing re­new­able en­er­gy.

“For the fore­see­able fu­ture, the world will con­tin­ue to need en­er­gy, and com­modi­ties pro­duced from crude oil and nat­ur­al gas, to pro­vide af­ford­able and se­cure heat­ing, cool­ing, light­ing and food for a grow­ing glob­al pop­u­la­tion,” Dook­ie added.

How­ev­er, this cer­tain­ly does not mean that it is busi­ness as usu­al.

He not­ed that while the Caribbean re­gion has cu­mu­la­tive­ly gen­er­at­ed on­ly a tiny por­tion of the green­house gas­es that are dri­ving hu­man-in­duced cli­mate change, they share in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions un­der the UN­FC­CC, to con­tribute to the re­duc­tion in glob­al emis­sions.

“And even if we did not have these oblig­a­tions, the world is in the midst of a decades-long en­er­gy tran­si­tion and that has se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions for the way in which we all op­er­ate. Some of our trad­ing part­ners are in­tro­duc­ing trade poli­cies that mean they will tax im­ports of key com­modi­ties based on their car­bon in­ten­si­ty. Many in­vestors and de­vel­op­ment banks have poli­cies that re­strict in­vest­ing in—or lend­ing to—fos­sil fu­el projects.

“And in­creas­ing­ly, our own peo­ple are de­mand­ing that we take cli­mate change se­ri­ous­ly and both re­duce emis­sions and plan how we adapt to a warm­ing world. Sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence in­di­cates that the world needs to rapid­ly ac­cel­er­ate the re­duc­tion in green­house gas emis­sions if we are to lim­it hu­man-in­duced cli­mate change to man­age­able lev­els,” Dook­ie ex­plained.

Clos­er to home, he said in T&T re­duc­ing the car­bon in­ten­si­ty of the en­er­gy and in­dus­tri­al sec­tors needs to be a top pri­or­i­ty to en­sure their long-term vi­a­bil­i­ty giv­en the coun­try’s well-de­vel­oped in­dus­tri­al sec­tor.

At the same time he ad­vised, “In an in­dus­tri­alised econ­o­my like ours, we al­so need to fo­cus on things like methane re­duc­tion, car­bon cap­ture and se­ques­tra­tion, the role of nat­ur­al gas, and low car­bon hy­dro­gen. And en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy is im­por­tant for every econ­o­my, whether de­pen­dent on heavy in­dus­try or tourism, though it some­how of­ten gets missed in the con­ver­sa­tion.”

While Dook­ie agreed that col­lab­o­ra­tion is im­por­tant in dri­ving en­er­gy ob­jec­tives, he said this is al­so of­ten dif­fi­cult, cit­ing that there is of­ten a lack of trust be­tween dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers that lim­its their abil­i­ty to col­lab­o­rate.

“Some en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists will in­evitably look at this con­fer­ence and dis­trust the in­ten­tions of the En­er­gy Cham­ber and our spon­sor com­pa­nies—the ac­cu­sa­tion of “green­wash­ing” (the act or prac­tice of mak­ing a prod­uct, pol­i­cy, ac­tiv­i­ty, etc. ap­pear to be more en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly) is one that gets eas­i­ly thrown around,” Dook­ie said.

Build­ing trust, he em­pha­sised, on­ly comes when peo­ple com­mit to di­a­logue and en­gage­ment, not­ing that trans­paren­cy is al­so ex­treme­ly im­por­tant to the process of build­ing trust.

“It is im­por­tant that we have sys­tems of in­de­pen­dent re­port­ing and ver­i­fi­ca­tion with­in the realm of emis­sions re­duc­tions to al­so build that trust.

“Acad­e­mia and NGOs have an im­por­tant role to play in this re­gard, as does the me­dia, to make sure that high­ly tech­ni­cal da­ta about emis­sions is com­mu­ni­cat­ed in a man­ner that the pub­lic un­der­stands and trusts. Build­ing trust will help with col­lab­o­ra­tion, but we al­so need col­lab­o­ra­tion to build trust,” Dook­ie main­tained.