Following the release of the Caribbean Energy Price Index H2 2026, two climate change and renewable energy experts are supporting the call made to update policies to increase renewable energy adoption in Trinidad and Tobago.
In the Caribbean Energy Price Index H2 2026, economist Marla Dukharan raised concern about the failure of Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago to fully harness power from solar projects, with the index suggesting the region use Uruguay’s transition to renewable energy as an example.
Kishan Kumarsingh, who served as Trinidad and Tobago’s lead climate negotiator for 30 years before his resignation earlier this year, agreed that the Uruguay approach could be “tailored to suit individual national circumstances in each country.”
In a response to questions sent by the Business Guardian, he explained, “However, the enabling environment to make things work is an essential prerequisite. This includes the policy, legislative, institutional, administrative and governance (transparency and accountability) structures, and harmonisation of the enabling environment across sectors. This serves to increase investor confidence where investment is needed for renewable energy (RE), otherwise available finance would be useless as RE cannot be deployed in a structured way and may run afoul of existing legislation. “
Kumarsingh pointed out in T&T there were “gaps in the enabling environment” related to legislation such as the T&TEC Act and the Regulated Industries Commission Act which created challenges for RE to be fed into the national power grid.
Last month the Business Guardian, highlighted the Brechin Castle Solar Farm was not supplying electricity to the national grid despite generating its first output over a year earlier.
Kumarsingh said the laws need modernised to address those issues.
He said, “This includes the adoption of a feed-in-tariff policy to allow domestic residences and small-scale commercial entities to generate RE and feed into the grid. Furthermore, grid modernisation would have to be a critical part of the enabling environment for RE as it would allow for the transformation of the grid into an intelligent web that can absorb, balance, and reroute power flowing from many RE sources to ensure grid stability and reliability, and cater for intermittency for example.”
Aside from that, Kumarsingh said there needed to be research done with regard to other sources of renewable energy.
He said, “Gathering ‘bankable’ data such as wind resource assessments will increase investor and investment confidence as the data will show the feasibility and predictability of generating renewable energy from wind, for example. So, all of these moving parts have to be connected to create a harmonised enabling environment if RE is to contribute to significantly to energy security, particularly in light of uncertain gas supplies.”
The climate change expert pointed out that the other major obstacle to RE transition was also highlighted in the Index; electricity in Trinidad and Tobago is cheap.
He said, “The major challenge of course remains the cheap cost of electricity arising largely from subsidies which hide the true cost-effectiveness of RE.”
He added that recently announced plans for the development of data centres and the re-opening of a steel mill may also reshape the energy dynamic of the country.
Kumarsingh said, “Also, in the absence of published numbers and analysis, it is likely that the re-establishment of the steel mill to also produce vanadium will require additional power for vanadium estimated as 250 to 500 per cent more energy/power (information sourced from the internet and depending on production method). This coupled with proposed AI data centres which require large amounts of power, is likely to utilize (or exceed) a significant amount of the unused capacity on the grid. “
But the climate expert said the onus was on Trinidad and Tobago to address its RE approach urgently due to its commitments under the Paris Agreement.
He said, “As articulated in the Nationally Determined Contribution, which commits to achieving a 30 per cent share of power generation from RE sources by 2030, which means that the enabling environment would have to be put in place quickly; otherwise, TT will not achieve its target.”
Meanwhile, Dr Randy Ramadhar Singh, who is the lead author of Energy System-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, offered a different point of view concerning T&T’s standing when asked about the Index
In a position paper sent to the Business Guardian, Dr Ramadhar Singh, said, “Read alongside local empirical research, the data suggest that Trinidad and Tobago is not lagging behind the global energy transition. Rather, it is operating from a fundamentally different starting position, one that calls for a bespoke roadmap rather than a borrowed template.”
He said that while T&T did not have the same access to RE resources to Uruguay, there were some policy approaches that can be emulated.
“Uruguay’s governance architecture, its competitive bidding processes, and its long-term Power Purchase Agreements, these procedural lessons are indeed transferable.
“The technological template, however, is not. Trinidad and Tobago already powers its national grid with 100 per cent domestic natural gas, a resource that places the nation in an enviable position relative to the global majority of countries still reliant on coal and heavy fuel oil.,” said Dr Ramadhar Singh.
“Rather than viewing this as a barrier to transition, it ought to be understood as a bridge. Our existing gas-fired infrastructure provides the grid inertia and spinning reserve capacity that intermittent renewables require, a luxury Uruguay achieved only through the complementarity of wind and its massive hydroelectric reservoirs.
“In this respect, Trinidad and Tobago is not behind Uruguay; it is ahead of most nations in the world that still burn coal and oil for power, and it possesses the engineering substrate upon which a Caribbean-specific hybrid model can be built,” he said.
Like Kumarsingh, Dr Ramadhar Singh urged policy to be updated with tariff adjustments which would encourage the transition and proper use of RE projects like the Brechin Castle Solar Farm.
“To harness unused capacity effectively, Trinidad and Tobago should prioritise grid modernisation and dynamic tariff structures over raw capacity expansion. Smart inverter mandates, time-of-use net metering, and sector coupling with industrial parks can transform excess midday solar from a liability into a schedulable resource.
“The Brechin Castle solar farm, which achieved grid connection in 2025, marks a promising first step, yet its success will depend on whether the system is configured to absorb its output intelligently rather than passively.”
He also made the call for feed-in tariffs for rooftop solar, which he explained would increase distributed capacity, energy security, and distributional justice, presenting another modality through which consumers can participate directly.
The energy transition expert hailed the report as being a necessary assessment of regional electricity costs, noting it does fill a gap with regard to data on the topic, however, he felt the paper could show T&T the path it should walk.
“The H2 2026 Caribbean Energy Price Index does not indict Trinidad and Tobago; it illuminates a strategic window. Our nation already generates electricity from a low-carbon source that most countries can only aspire to, and we possess the technical workforce, the grid infrastructure, and the solar irradiance to build a distinctly Caribbean energy future. Uruguay’s lesson is not its hydroelectric endowment, which we cannot replicate, but its process: data-driven planning, competitive procurement, and national consensus,” he said.
Ramadhar Singh said that by integrating rigorous local modelling into national policy, modernising the grid to absorb rather than curtail renewable output, and treating energy efficiency as a generation resource in its own right, T&T can transition from regional outlier to regional exemplar.
“The Index provides the benchmark; our task is to write the model,” he said.
Dr Kumar Singh said the warnings in it resonated strongly with findings from the University of the West Indies’ research on the topic.
