En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has ad­mit­ted that the pace of the tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fu­els, like oil and gas, to re­new­able en­er­gy like wind, so­lar and hy­dro elec­tric had made this coun­try vul­ner­a­ble, but did not catch it flat foot­ed.

While ad­dress­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion on glob­al en­er­gy tran­si­tion at day one of the T&T En­er­gy con­fer­ence, the Min­is­ter ad­mit­ted that the en­er­gy land­scape had changed quick­er than an­tic­i­pat­ed but Trinidad and To­ba­go he said will be able to adapt.

“There  is  a  glob­al  call  for  clean­er  en­er­gy  and  a  re­duc­tion  in  the  car­bon foot­print at a much faster pace than may have been en­vis­aged five to ten years ago. In this tran­si­tion there will be tri­umphs and ca­su­al­ties. As an oil and gas econ­o­my, Trinidad and To­ba­go is vul­ner­a­ble, but we are not flat foot­ed. We have to act now,” Young told the pan­el dur­ing his speech.

“We are con­fi­dent  that  Trinidad  and To­ba­go is well po­si­tioned and poised to ma­noeu­vre to en­sure the con­tin­u­a­tion and growth of the sec­tor for decades to come,” he as­sured.

He in­sist­ed that T&T is mak­ing the right steps to piv­ot to­wards clean­er en­er­gy.

The Min­is­ter said nu­mer­ous deals had been ne­go­ti­at­ed with­in the en­er­gy sec­tor to en­sure that Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mained vi­able, how­ev­er he ac­knowl­edged that giv­en the Paris agree­ment, greater fo­cus was need­ed on the pro­duc­tion of clean­er en­er­gy.

Young said the shift did not mean ‘our in­dus­try, which is cur­rent­ly heav­i­ly oil and gas based, would lose rel­e­vance’.

“There  is  a  lot  of  op­por­tu­ni­ty  here  in  Trinidad  and  To­ba­go  as the plants in the gas sec­tor can be trans­formed with the right in­vest­ments to en­sure clean­er  and  low­er  car­bon  en­er­gy. We  will  con­tin­ue  to  work  with  the  var­i­ous down­stream­ers  as  there  are  al­so  ex­cit­ing  op­por­tu­ni­ties  in  am­mo­nia,  methanol  and oth­er com­modi­ties,” said Young who point­ed to the con­tin­ued pro­mo­tion of CNG in this coun­try as well as re­cent in­vest­ments to pro­duce clean­er en­er­gy with­in the in­dus­try.

“CNG  has  been  ac­tive­ly  pro­mot­ed as  it  pro­duces  few­er harm­ful  emis­sions  than  gaso­line.  In  the  pow­er  gen­er­a­tion sec­tor we have  start­ed the tran­si­tion to green en­er­gy with the planned in­tro­duc­tion of new ca­pac­i­ty from so­lar  en­er­gy and there  are plans to  uti­lize  ex­cess pow­er  in  the  sys­tem to  pro­duce hy­dro­gen  from  elec­trol­y­sis,” he said.

“This  is  in  ad­di­tion  to  in­cen­tives  pro­vid­ed  for  the adop­tion of so­lar en­er­gy by house­holds and en­ter­pris­es.“ Young said. —PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER