The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs has start­ed work on a Re­gion­al Re­new­able En­er­gy Cen­tre, fol­low­ing the re­cent sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) be­tween T&T and the Unit­ed States.An as­sess­ment sur­vey for the cen­tre's lo­ca­tion and out­fit­ting, which has been bud­get­ed, is sched­uled to be­gin short­ly.

The MOU, which was signed by deputy sec­re­tary of the US De­part­ment of En­er­gy, Daniel Pone­man, and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine, was an­nounced by the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter dur­ing the re­cent vis­it by US Vice Pres­i­dent, Joseph Biden.The sign­ing was the cul­mi­na­tion of dis­cus­sions man­dat­ed by the En­er­gy min­is­ter among a high-pow­ered group of en­er­gy tech­nocrats and in­dus­try stake­hold­ers.

The MOU falls with­in the frame­work of the En­er­gy and Cli­mate Part­ner­ship of the Amer­i­c­as (EC­PA) and seeks to fos­ter green ini­tia­tives with­in T&T and the Cari­com re­gion.The US De­part­ment of En­er­gy will pro­vide tech­ni­cal sup­port, par­tic­u­lar­ly through the US Na­tion­al Re­new­able En­er­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ries, and ad­vise on the es­tab­lish­ment of the cen­tre. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the MOU will fa­cil­i­tate co-op­er­a­tion on sci­en­tif­ic, tech­ni­cal and pol­i­cy as­pects of en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy and clean en­er­gy tech­nolo­gies through the ex­change of ideas and in­for­ma­tion.

The sign­ing fol­lows on the heels of sev­er­al land­mark ini­tia­tives in the spheres of re­new­able en­er­gy and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy that are be­ing dri­ven by the En­er­gy Min­istry.The largest de­ploy­ment of re­new­able en­er­gy tech­nolo­gies in the coun­try and the largest Gov­ern­ment-fund­ed re­new­able en­er­gy project in the Caribbean were achieved with the re­cent in­stal­la­tion of so­lar-pow­ered se­cu­ri­ty lights at nine com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres in T&T.

A pi­lot so­lar ther­mal project has start­ed at 25 schools in­volv­ing the in­stal­la­tion of so­lar pho­to­volta­ic sys­tems and dis­til­la­tion units com­bined with a pro­gramme of teacher train­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T.In a his­toric move to­wards en­er­gy di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, a Wind Re­source As­sess­ment Pro­gramme (Wrap) is be­ing con­duct­ed along the east coast in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the es­tab­lish­ment of a wind tur­bine farm to gen­er­ate en­er­gy.

Min­is­ter Ram­nar­ine ex­plained that the Wrap is a sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment be­cause by us­ing less nat­ur­al gas to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty, the gas can be liq­ue­fied and sold as prof­itable car­goes of LNG.The En­er­gy Min­istry has al­so been un­rolling its Na­tion­al En­er­gy Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Cam­paign over the past year to sen­si­tise the pop­u­la­tion on tra­di­tion­al sources of en­er­gy, en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy and con­ser­va­tion and re­new­able en­er­gy tech­nolo­gies.