On Wednes­day, Ju­nior En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Ra­mona Ram­di­al an­nounced the gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion to make pub­lic trans­porta­tion green though a shift from diesel to com­pressed nat­ur­al gas (CNG). It wasn't the first time.In Sep­tem­ber 2011, Frank Look Kin, chair­man of the Nat­ur­al Gas Ve­hi­cles Task Force promised that by the end of the year, the na­tion's "mo­tor ve­hi­cle pop­u­la­tion will be in a po­si­tion to start mov­ing in­to com­pressed nat­ur­al gas (CNG) and away from diesel and gaso­line."

That was in align­ment with the task force's stat­ed plan in 2011 to con­vert 20 per cent of T&T's 500,000 ve­hi­cles over five years.That hasn't hap­pened, though there have been half-heart­ed nods to­ward greater use of CNG since then.In De­cem­ber 2012, the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion's En­gi­neer­ing De­part­ment suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed the first con­ver­sion of a bus from diesel fu­el to CNG in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean. It took the team two weeks to do the pi­lot con­ver­sion.

The most im­me­di­ate ad­van­tage was a re­duc­tion in fu­el costs, from over $400 to un­der $100 for a full tank on the pub­lic trans­port ve­hi­cle.That alone should have been a good rea­son to dri­ve the con­ver­sion process for­ward, but the fal­ter­ing com­mit­ment to CNG fu­el as a na­tion­al choice has been a ma­jor stum­bling block to the decades long ef­fort to add nat­ur­al gas to the na­tion's pumps.

Sim­ply chang­ing re­fu­elling sta­tions at the na­tion's bus ter­mi­nus sys­tem, as use­ful as that is, does not ad­dress the fail­ure by mul­ti­ple gov­ern­ments to ad­e­quate­ly sup­port ef­forts by pri­vate taxis and maxi taxis to switch to the fu­el al­ter­na­tive.

As Ms Ram­di­al not­ed in Wednes­day's ad­dress to stu­dents at­tend­ing the UNDP's Knowl­edge Fair, the Gov­ern­ment has ap­proved a na­tion­al cli­mate change pol­i­cy since 2011, but the ob­vi­ous ad­van­tage of CNG as a cost-ef­fec­tive way to change the coun­try's emis­sions pro­file has not been pur­sued with any sus­tained vigour.In May 2012, VM­COTT be­gan con­struc­tion on a CNG sta­tion.

In May, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny an­nounced that it had be­gun switch­ing its fleet to CNG and would be in­stalling a fill­ing sta­tion for its ve­hi­cles at its Point Lisas com­pound.It wouldn't be un­til March 2013 that En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine would be­gin talk­ing about CNG, stoked by the open­ing of a new $30 mil­lion Unipet fill­ing sta­tion in Ch­agua­nas, the coun­try's first in 20 years.But the cars won't come with­out more fill­ing sta­tions and it's go­ing to take an ex­ec­u­tive in­ter­ven­tion to change this chick­en and egg dilem­ma.

With­out a na­tion­al com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing CNG at all ser­vice sta­tions, the groundswell of switch­ers nev­er ar­rived and in­ter­est even­tu­al­ly be­gan to with­er.CNG has al­ways had com­pelling ad­van­tages for ve­hi­cle own­ers be­yond its clean­er burn­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics, and the tragedy of its fail­ure re­mains one of the more shame­ful episodes in our his­to­ry as an en­er­gy pro­duc­ing and con­sum­ing na­tion.

But it's one of those ideas with a val­ue that hasn't ex­pired yet, and it's not too late for the gov­ern­ment to make good on vague promis­es to bring CNG more ful­ly and vi­ably back to the menu of op­tions for au­to­mo­bile own­ers.