Gail Alexan­der

Trinidad and To­ba­go will have ev­i­dence at the up­com­ing Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM), which T&T is host­ing, to show this coun­try is play­ing its part in the crit­i­cal in­ter­na­tion­al is­sue of glob­al en­vi­ron­ment and in re­duc­tion of car­bon emis­sions, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning said yes­ter­day.

Man­ning made the point in launch­ing the new $600 mil­lion dual-pow­er fa­cil­i­ty at the Cove, Low­lands, in To­ba­go which was start­ed in 2007 and was de­liv­ered ahead of sched­ule. The sta­tion built by the Finnish firm of Wart­si­la Caribbean Inc, is the first fu­el (nat­ur­al gas) rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing plant in the re­gion and will not on­ly meet To­ba­go's needs for pow­er, but its 64 megawatts of pow­er will al­so be enough to sup­ply Trinidad, when nec­es­sary, via sub­ma­rine fiber op­tic ca­ble in­ter­con­nec­tions. Man­ning said, "I'm sure you see the sym­bol­ism, this new in­ter­con­nec­tion un­der­scores the fact that To­ba­go and Trinidad walk hand in hand, side by side as a sin­gle na­tion fac­ing the fu­ture to­geth­er as equal part­ners." T&TEC chair­man Clement Im­bert said the sta­tion rep­re­sents a new era of in­de­pen­dence for To­ba­go which had de­pend­ed on sub­ma­rine ca­bles to ob­tain pow­er from Trinidad. The sta­tion will op­er­ate at an in­ter­im ca­pac­i­ty of 48 megawatts. Nine­ty per cent of the con­trac­tors on the project were lo­cal.

T&TEC act­ing gen­er­al man­ag­er Glen­ford Cyrille said the sta­tion is the first nat­ur­al gas diesel plant in the re­gion and rep­re­sent­ed the dawn of a new age for T&TEC and its cus­tomers. It will utilise a "green" ap­proach, leav­ing less emis­sions in the at­mos­phere and there­fore less of a car­bon foot­print. He said it was of na­tion­al im­por­tance to go "green." Man­ning al­so said the fa­cil­i­ty was the first nat­ur­al gas rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing en­gine plant of its kind in the re­gion and was con­struct­ed ac­cord­ing to the high­est in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards for en­vi­ron­men­tal emis­sions. He said it was ex­pect­ed to ac­count for a re­duc­tion in car­bon emis­sions by thou­sands of tons an­nu­al­ly when run on nat­ur­al gas. This com­pares favourably with a sim­i­lar­ly sized-diesel plant of old­er tech­nolo­gies.

Man­ning added, "When there­fore the is­sue of glob­al en­vi­ron­ment comes up at the Com­mon­wealth meet­ing next month in Port-of-Spain we will be able to re­peat now, with fur­ther ev­i­dence to sup­port our claim, that T&T, though a rel­a­tive­ly small en­er­gy econ­o­my, is com­mit­ted to play­ing its part in this crit­i­cal in­ter­na­tion­al is­sue." He said the sit­u­a­tion al­so strength­ened T&T's po­si­tion for the glob­al sum­mit on the en­vi­ron­ment in Copen­hagen in De­cem­ber when cru­cial de­ci­sions on en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues would be tak­en.

Two oth­er pow­er sta­tion ini­tia­tives are on the hori­zon in­clud­ing one at Union es­tate which will dri­ve the alu­minum smelter and which is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed at the end of 2010, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mustapha Ab­dul Hamid said yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing at the launch of the Cov­er pow­er sta­tion in To­ba­go, Hamid said the Union sta­tion in­volves a 700 megawatt sup­ply be­ing built by Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed. The oth­er planned sta­tion is a sim­i­lar sized fa­cil­i­ty to be built by Sea Lots to re­place the Wright­son Road pow­er sta­tion. sched­uled for com­ple­tion by 2013.