PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has con­firmed the Cab­i­net has ap­proved plans to in­tro­duce var­i­ous green en­er­gy sources in­to the coun­try's pow­er grid.

Dur­ing his speech at the un­veil­ing of the Trinidad and To­ba­go En­er­gy Map & NGC Green En­er­gy Map, the Min­is­ter con­firmed that NGC's man­date in­volves the ex­pan­sion of clean en­er­gy sources in the coun­try.

"I can say here to­day, that two weeks ago I went to Cab­i­net for the ap­proval and the con­fir­ma­tion for us to pur­sue full speed ahead. The use of wind en­er­gy to bring wind en­er­gy in­to elec­tric­i­ty grid. We're al­so look­ing at green hy­dro­gen. Cab­i­net has ap­proved the re­struc­tur­ing of our green hy­dro­gen project and we're look­ing at oth­er green hy­dro­gen projects. So we're not look­ing to on­ly do one green hy­dro­gen project, but hope­ful­ly we will be able to bring on stream two," said Min­is­ter Young.

He ex­plained, that the re­cent ap­point­ment of Toni Sir­ju-Ram­nar­ine as NGC Green Pres­i­dent, was strate­gic in terms of these goals.

"Don't un­der­es­ti­mate that lead­er­ship de­ci­sion as well be­cause any­one op­er­at­ing in the space of en­er­gy has to be aware of what is go­ing on how we're clean­ing and clean­ing en­er­gy. NGC took the de­ci­sion to re­brand CNG which is on­ly one pil­lar of clean­er en­er­gy and now are look­ing to ex­pand that port­fo­lio. And that is your chal­lenge. How do you ex­pand that port­fo­lio not on­ly for the NGC but for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

"You have a head start with a 30 per cent share­hold­ing in Project Lara. But there are oth­er projects tak­ing place in the green space," said Min­is­ter Young.

In Jan­u­ary NGC CNG was re­brand­ed to NGC Green with a greater man­date for re­new­able en­er­gy ex­pan­sion.