Whilst em­pha­sis­ing eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, the Gov­ern­ment is al­so right­ly fo­cused on the en­er­gy sec­tor. Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of En­er­gy’s Con­sol­i­dat­ed Month­ly Bul­letin, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s av­er­age dai­ly oil pro­duc­tion from Jan­u­ary to De­cem­ber 2024 was 50,854 bar­rels per day and has since in­creased to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 54,000 bar­rels per day at present.

Nat­ur­al gas has al­so re­port­ed­ly in­creased from around 2.5 to 2.73 bil­lion cu­bic feet, and For­eign Di­rect In­vest­ment (FDI) in up­stream en­er­gy could rise from US$2.2 bil­lion in 2025 to US$2.5 bil­lion in 2026. The deep­wa­ter bid round of­fered 26 blocks and closed with four bids, in­clud­ing a US$42.5 mil­lion pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract with Exxon­Mo­bil for Block TTUD-1.

Lo­cal re­new­able en­er­gy is al­so mov­ing. This is very im­por­tant. An­a­lysts say glob­al oil de­mand will peak over the com­ing decade, with the In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Agency fore­cast­ing “a stag­ger­ing glut, 8mn bar­rels a day of sur­plus” as ear­ly as 2029 “if the in­dus­try con­tin­ues to in­crease pro­duc­tion”.

We there­fore wel­come the ma­jor re­new­able mile­stone reached lo­cal­ly in Ju­ly when the 92.2-megawatt Brechin Cas­tle so­lar plant be­gan de­liv­er­ing green pow­er, set to be the largest so­lar fa­cil­i­ty in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean. And re­cent­ly, Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Dr Kennedy Swarats­ingh an­nounced an­oth­er mile­stone, the com­mis­sion­ing of an 8.9-kilo­watt so­lar pho­to­volta­ic sys­tem at the San Fer­nan­do UTT Cam­pus, a project fund­ed by the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) and its Glob­al Cli­mate Change Al­liance. This was the 16th of 18 sites com­plet­ed. At the of­fi­cial han­dover of the project last week, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar said it brings to­geth­er “di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, diplo­ma­cy, and de­liv­ery to shape our next chap­ter of de­vel­op­ment”.

A pos­i­tive im­pact is en­vis­aged on the coun­try’s en­er­gy tran­si­tion. In the UTT project alone, 101 peo­ple were trained in op­er­a­tions and main­te­nance. With 17 oth­er projects, the coun­try is de­vel­op­ing skilled cit­i­zens to sus­tain its re­new­able en­er­gy pro­grammes.

Green en­er­gy cre­ates jobs, I re­peat­ed­ly told the last ad­min­is­tra­tion. To no avail. World­wide, 16.2 mil­lion jobs have al­ready been cre­at­ed. This will leap to 100 mil­lion by 2030! In­creas­ing de­mand for re­new­able en­er­gy ne­ces­si­tates a skilled work­force to de­sign, build, and main­tain the sys­tems.

We should have al­ready had a flour­ish­ing in­dus­try. But the last ad­min­is­tra­tion wast­ed ten years! Re­new­ables will be “the fastest grow­ing class of en­er­gy”, I said as far back as 2014. I was right. By next year, it will be the world’s largest source of elec­tric­i­ty, with wind and so­lar pow­er pro­duced at record lev­els. A record-break­ing 30 per cent of the world’s elec­tric­i­ty was pro­duced by re­new­ables in 2024. It will be 35 per cent by the end of this year. This is “the be­gin­ning of the end of the fos­sil age in pow­er gen­er­a­tion”, says the Glob­al Elec­tric­i­ty Re­view.

But we are on­ly now start­ing the jour­ney. I re­peat­ed­ly called on the last ad­min­is­tra­tion for a re­new­able en­er­gy pol­i­cy, which the ex­perts say is crit­i­cal for a “suc­cess­ful tran­si­tion to clean en­er­gy”. Bar­ba­dos has its Na­tion­al En­er­gy Pol­i­cy to achieve 100 per cent re­new­able en­er­gy in sev­en years and is al­ready re­ceiv­ing en­er­gy from wind, so­lar, hy­dropow­er, ge­ot­her­mal, mod­ern bio­mass, and wave and tidal sources.

Cos­ta Ri­ca gets al­most 100 per cent of its elec­tric­i­ty from re­new­ables; Ja­maica will achieve 33 per cent by 2030; and Guyana, over­flow­ing with oil and gas, is work­ing with Nor­way and In­dia to achieve 74 per cent by 2040. We are so far be­hind.

Thank­ful­ly, this new ad­min­is­tra­tion is al­ready fi­nal­is­ing a re­new­able en­er­gy pol­i­cy. They wise­ly recog­nise wind as a cen­tral pil­lar of the strat­e­gy, iden­ti­fy­ing 2.75 gi­gawatts of on­shore and 32 gi­gawatts of off­shore wind po­ten­tial. Swarats­ingh says the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) has fund­ed “an as­sess­ment pro­gramme to de­ter­mine where wind tur­bines can be placed”.

In­deed, for­mer EU Am­bas­sador Pe­ter Cavendish had al­ready point­ed to the south of the coun­try, be­tween Trinidad and Venezuela, with a “wind fun­nel” that could have “wind en­er­gy of about 3.5 on a scale of one to five”. He said the Ga­le­o­ta Port, at the south­east­ern tip of Trinidad, is al­so per­fect for pro­vid­ing ac­cess to plat­forms for wind tur­bines. “You don’t have to re-en­gi­neer the port,” Cavendish said. The many oil and gas rigs “can be re­pur­posed to put wind tur­bines on top of them”.

Ex­act­ly as I told the last ad­min­is­tra­tion as far back as 2019. I said, “Wind is now pro­duc­ing more than half of all re­new­able pow­er, one of the fastest-grow­ing in­dus­tries in the world. Big Oil is lead­ing the way, us­ing their very off­shore plat­forms to mount wind tur­bines.”

Shell and Sta­toil were then to­geth­er pow­er­ing over two mil­lion homes in Eu­rope, and BP and To­tal were al­so in­vest­ing. I asked, “Why do we speak to the multi­na­tion­als on­ly of oil and gas and waste the wind blow­ing abun­dant­ly off­shore?” Last year, glob­al in­vest­ments in wind en­er­gy reached US$217 bil­lion! But the last ad­min­is­tra­tion kept dream­ing, “Drag­on gas is com­ing.”

Not this Gov­ern­ment. They are al­ready look­ing fur­ther ahead and lay­ing the foun­da­tion for a green hy­dro­gen econ­o­my by con­sid­er­ing the in­te­gra­tion of wind en­er­gy with green hy­dro­gen pro­duc­tion. They aim to scale 25 gi­gawatts of off­shore wind ca­pac­i­ty and pro­duce 1.5 mil­lion tonnes of hy­dro­gen an­nu­al­ly by 2044, with a long-term tar­get of four mil­lion tonnes by 2065. Vi­sion sup­port­ed by ac­tion. Re­new­able en­er­gy is mov­ing un­der this ad­min­is­tra­tion.