Much of the fo­cus at this week’s en­er­gy con­fer­ence was fixed on the po­ten­tial re­turns from oil and gas projects.

How­ev­er, on Tues­day af­ter­noon, dur­ing an In­no­va­tion Chal­lenge pre­sen­ta­tion, Smart Moun­tain Inc’s CEO and co-founder, Navin Seeter­ram, touched on a po­ten­tial dark cloud over the down­stream sec­tor due to the im­pact of the Car­bon Bor­der Ad­just­ment Mech­a­nism by the Eu­ro­pean Union on T&T’s in­dus­tries.

The EU’s CBAM took ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1, 2026.

A Ju­ly 2024 re­port, pro­duced by Dr Preeya Mo­han and Dr Jaymieon Jages­sar of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), quan­ti­fied the po­ten­tial ef­fect of the CBAM on this coun­try’s ex­ports to the EU. It stat­ed that ex­ports of in­or­gan­ic chem­i­cals (US$721.9 mil­lion, or 28 per cent of T&T ex­ports to the EU), min­er­al fu­els (US$687.4 mil­lion, or 27 per cent of T&T ex­ports to the EU), or­gan­ic chem­i­cals (US$499.5 mil­lion, or 19.5 per cent of T&T ex­ports to the EU), and fer­tilis­ers (US$411.8 mil­lion, or 16 per cent of T&T ex­ports to the EU) were in the crosshairs.

This is­sue was pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed in the Busi­ness Guardian on Au­gust 24, 2025 and No­vem­ber 23, 2025 in the Busi­ness Guardian.

Mo­han’s re­port sug­gest­ed the EU car­bon tax on some T&T ex­ports to Eu­rope could dis­suade com­pa­nies with­in the Union from buy­ing T&T chem­i­cals and fer­tilis­ers.

To com­pound mat­ters, the UK is al­so set to op­er­a­tionalise its CBAM as well by 2027.

How­ev­er, Seeter­ram treat­ed the de­vel­op­ment not as an ob­sta­cle but an op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“Most com­pa­nies view car­bon plans as a cost, but Smart Moun­tain in­verts that. What if your car­bon emis­sion roadmap sus­tained your rev­enue stream in high-val­ue mar­kets?” asked Seeter­ram, who ex­plained that Smart Moun­tain had de­vel­oped a dig­i­tal re­search in­fra­struc­ture to en­able bank­able de­car­bon­i­sa­tion in emerg­ing mar­kets.

He said tak­ing ac­tion with re­gard to CBAM could be used to re­build in­dus­tri­al com­pet­i­tive­ness, as he stressed there were many eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits of de­car­bon­i­sa­tion.

Con­verse­ly, he warned that in­ac­tion could deal a se­vere blow to an in­dus­try that is al­ready wob­bling as a re­sult of tar­iff im­po­si­tions and un­cer­tain­ty due to nat­ur­al gas sup­ply. He used Nu­trien’s re­cent ac­tions as a cau­tion­ary tale, but warned that oth­er am­mo­nia pro­duc­ers in T&T could be im­pact­ed.

“The base is 500 di­rect jobs and 5,000 sup­ply chains. The de­ci­sions we make now are bet­ter, whether or not they stay in Trinidad. But here’s what mat­ters: The re­al cost isn’t tar­iffs. It’s the in­sti­tu­tion count. The re­al cost is that we lack a cred­i­ble-based in­fra­struc­ture. Nu­trien has al­ready left. With­out ac­tion, the next op­er­a­tor will be walk­ing out,” said Seeter­ram.

“But this is­sue ex­tends be­yond en­er­gy com­pa­nies as 500 MSMEs face code-three ex­po­sure. Some 15,000 jobs would be at risk. Food pro­duc­ers and bev­er­age com­pa­nies face ris­ing costs, whether or not they want to be pre­mi­um.”

He al­so point­ed out that cur­rent­ly T&T does have poor air qual­i­ty as a re­sult of our lim­it­ed de­car­bon­i­sa­tion strate­gies, adding that adopt­ing the Smart Moun­tain plat­form could not just save costs but al­so aid in re­duc­ing health is­sues as a re­sult.

“De­car­bon­i­sa­tion saves Gov­ern­ment mon­ey, re­al mon­ey, and the Gov­ern­ment faces a fis­cal cri­sis too. Loss of cor­po­rate tax and en­er­gy,” he said, “The prob­lem isn’t avail­abil­i­ty, it is solv­abil­i­ty, and we need­ed a crit­i­cal path­way from in­sight to ac­tion.”

He ex­plained the re­al chal­lenge in ap­proach­ing de­car­bon­i­sa­tion was the lim­it­ed da­ta that could in­form the re­quired strate­gies to not just hit the re­quired tar­gets but im­ple­ment those ben­e­fits.

He said, “Here’s why most de­car­bon­i­sa­tion prod­ucts fail in emerg­ing mar­kets. It’s at­tempt­ing to prove that you need to de­car­bonise, but you can’t prove that you can ac­tu­al­ly do it when you prove you’ll do it.”

David Hart, a mem­ber of Pro­man’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions team who came in from Switzer­land for the en­er­gy con­fer­ence, agreed with the Smart Moun­tain CEO, as he ac­knowl­edged that lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion had im­pact­ed the com­pa­ny’s prepa­ra­tion for the EU CBAM.

Pro­man is the largest pro­duc­er of am­mo­nia in Trinidad.

Hart ex­plained, “At the mo­ment, there’s on­ly a cer­tain num­ber of prod­ucts that are cov­ered by CBAM. So CBAM is con­nect­ed to the EU ETS (EU Emis­sions Trad­ing Scheme). And then what the com­mis­sion has done is they’ve brought sev­er­al prod­ucts in­to CBAM in the first tran­si­tion. One of those is fer­tilis­ers. So cur­rent­ly, fer­tilis­ers from Trinidad would be in­clud­ed in CBAM. The ques­tion is, what lev­el the CBAM is set at, be­cause at the mo­ment, many of the de­tails are pro­vi­sion­al. “

How­ev­er, he not­ed that while there was un­cer­tain­ty in that re­gard, he said the in­dus­try would not be im­pact­ed by the CBAM un­til 2027.

“For ex­am­ple, we on­ly know, rough­ly, the de­fault val­ues for Trinidad as a coun­try, and we al­so on­ly know at this stage what the ETS price is on a rolling quar­ter­ly ba­sis. So at this stage, it’s dif­fi­cult to work out what the im­pact is specif­i­cal­ly. But we know there is an im­pact in this year for 2026, but the im­pact will be felt in 2027,’ he said. “So you’ll have to pay for and then sur­ren­der your cer­tifi­cates in 2027.”

Hart said Pro­man had raised con­cerns about the lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion put for­ward.

He said, “That’s been what we’ve been say­ing to Eu­ro­pean stake­hold­ers for many, many months, be­cause we knew, every­body knew this de­fin­i­tive pe­ri­od of CBAM was com­ing. But we on­ly found out about de­fault val­ues, bench­marks and oth­er things in De­cem­ber, and even then, there’s still some pro­vi­sion­al el­e­ments to it.

“So cer­tain­ty is a chal­lenge. But their ar­gu­ment would be that that’s what this year is for. So, you on­ly ac­tu­al­ly have to pur­chase the cer­tifi­cates in Feb­ru­ary 2027, for this year’s CBAM.”

Hart al­so ex­plained that there was al­so un­cer­tain­ty with re­gard to the en­force­ment of the CBAM due to the pres­sures it had placed on the EU econ­o­my.

“The oth­er com­pli­cat­ing mat­ter of that is that the Com­mis­sion re­cent­ly talked about po­ten­tial­ly sus­pend­ing CBAM be­cause of the im­pact that the in­crease in costs would have on EU farm­ers. So we’re ob­vi­ous­ly watch­ing that with great in­ter­est to see what hap­pens,” Hart said.

Ei­ther way, the CBAM ef­fect, be it pos­i­tive, neg­a­tive, or non-ap­plic­a­ble, is one to watch.