GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of bpTT David Camp­bell says the com­pa­ny is try­ing to be a more ef­fi­cient pro­duc­er and the elim­i­na­tion of waste is one way of do­ing that.

“We should be do­ing that all the time,” Camp­bell said, when asked by mem­bers of the me­dia at yes­ter­day’s Caribbean Sus­tain­able En­er­gy Con­fer­ence whether there would be any sort of cost-cut­ting mea­sures lo­cal­ly, or any plans in terms of bpTT in the long term.

“I don’t re­al­ly think about cost cut­ting. I mean, that’s got a very neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion, but elim­i­na­tion of waste, wher­ev­er we see it, try­ing to be a more ef­fi­cient pro­duc­er, we should be do­ing that all the time.

“And that’s ex­act­ly what we’ve been fo­cused on. And our teams have been re­al­ly good at bring­ing for­ward ideas. So I want peo­ple to feel em­pow­ered to point that out and use new tech­nolo­gies, new tech­niques, learn from oth­ers,” Camp­bell said.

On the com­pa­ny’s per­for­mance, he said bpTT has made a lot of progress in the last year or so adding that he was “re­al­ly pleased with that.”
“Pro­duc­tion has been stronger, the un­der­ly­ing per­for­mance of the busi­ness has been good. I think co­op­er­a­tion across the in­dus­try is very pos­i­tive. I give cred­it to the Gov­ern­ment that we worked with be­fore and the ear­ly con­ver­sa­tions we’ve had with the new gov­ern­ment as well. So that, I think, all au­gurs very well for Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he added.

The theme of the con­fer­ence is “Adapt­ing and Re­cal­i­brat­ing.”

Chair of the En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T Mala Bali­raj, who ad­dressed par­tic­i­pants at the start of the event, said while there is clear­ly progress across the re­gion and tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ties ex­ist, the re­al­i­ty is that ac­tu­al im­ple­men­ta­tion lags be­hind am­bi­tion.

She said giv­en the glob­al shifts, it is im­por­tant to take a hard and hon­est look and see what is need­ed to close that gap.

“The dis­cus­sion on sus­tain­able en­er­gy in the Caribbean tends to fo­cus main­ly on the elec­tric­i­ty sec­tor and in­vest­ments in re­new­able en­er­gy. While this is ab­solute­ly cru­cial, there al­so needs to be a fo­cus on the in­dus­tri­al sec­tor and what are of­ten called the ‘hard to abate’ sec­tors.

“With­in the Caribbean, the En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T is unique­ly placed to bring to­geth­er ex­perts from the tra­di­tion­al fos­sil fu­el sec­tor, heavy in­dus­try and spe­cial­ists work­ing in re­new­ables and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy, to dis­cuss shared chal­lenges and op­por­tu­ni­ties to the ben­e­fit of our re­gion. This sets apart this con­fer­ence, from some of the oth­er re­gion­al sus­tain­able en­er­gy fo­rums,” Bali­raj said.

On the is­sue of skills, she said this could be used for the ben­e­fit of the en­tire Caribbean, not­ing that the En­er­gy Cham­ber has al­ways been ac­tive­ly in­volved in ef­forts at re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion.

“We con­tin­ue to be­lieve that the full im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my—or CSME—will help boost eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment in all Caribbean coun­tries.

“The pri­vate sec­tor in T&T has demon­strat­ed its readi­ness to share ex­pe­ri­ences, to in­vest and to work in part­ner­ship with com­pa­nies across the re­gion. As in many cas­es, it is the pri­vate sec­tor which has led on re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion, and we re­main com­mit­ted to the cause,” Bali­raj said.

She ad­vised while the pri­vate sec­tor could and does trade across bor­ders, it would need a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach with gov­ern­ments, reg­u­la­tors and re­gion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions to ful­ly ben­e­fit from in­te­gra­tion of en­er­gy sys­tems.

“There is a big po­ten­tial op­por­tu­ni­ty with re­gion­al grid in­te­gra­tion, and we think that is a con­ver­sa­tion that needs to be ac­tive­ly pur­sued. We are clear that all of the economies in our re­gion are small and vul­ner­a­ble to ex­ter­nal shocks. Bet­ter re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion will help build re­silience and al­low for a more di­ver­si­fied en­er­gy mix,” Bali­raj sug­gest­ed.

The con­fer­ence which be­gan yes­ter­day and is be­ing held at the Hilton Ho­tel is ex­pect­ed to con­clude on to­mor­row.