Amend­ments to the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) Act and the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) Act are be­ing con­sid­ered to al­low for in­cor­po­ra­tion of re­new­able en­er­gy.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Nicole Olivierre, in her con­tri­bu­tion to a re­cent Sus­tain­able En­er­gy for All Ini­tia­tive (SE4ALL) in Tar­i­ja, Bo­livia, said these were among steps planned to cre­ate the nec­es­sary fis­cal, le­gal and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for the in­te­gra­tion of re­new­able en­er­gy sys­tems in­to the na­tion­al grids sys­tem.

"As a first step we have de­vel­oped a Feed-In Tar­iff (FIT) pol­i­cy which pro­vides the ap­pro­pri­ate guides for es­tab­lish­ing a tar­iff," she said.

The min­is­ter added: "The gov­ern­ment has al­so been re­ceiv­ing tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance from the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) un­der the Sus­tain­able En­er­gy Ca­pac­i­ty Build­ing Ini­tia­tive (SECBI) by the De­part­ment of Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment. Cur­rent­ly, the OAS is as­sist­ing with the de­sign of a toolk­it for the de­vel­op­ment of re­new­able en­er­gy pow­er pur­chase agree­ments and con­tracts. In sup­port of the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Bu­reau of Stan­dards (TTBS) has de­vel­oped prod­uct and tech­ni­cal stan­dards re­lat­ed to RE tech­nolo­gies."

Olivierre said the fea­si­bil­i­ty of a Waste to En­er­gy (WtE) is be­ing con­sid­ered as "sol­id waste man­age­ment is be­com­ing a chal­lenge in our small is­land na­tion."

A Wind Re­source As­sess­ment Pro­gramme has been pro­posed to eval­u­ate the fea­si­bil­i­ty of in­tro­duc­tion of a wind farm and es­tab­lish­ment of a lo­cal so­lar pho­to­volta­ic (PV) man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty is al­so be­ing con­sid­ered.