Giesha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young says a bal­ance must be found be­tween T&T as a hy­dro­car­bon-based econ­o­my and the right blend of re­new­able en­er­gy dri­ven by clean­er tech­nol­o­gy which would fetch green com­mod­i­ty prices on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket.

This as Young re­ceived a re­port on the out­comes of a “study tour” of Chile from the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme of T&T (UNDPTT) at a meet­ing host­ed re­cent­ly by the UNDPTT at the Brix Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.

The re­port en­tailed key find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions to ad­vance re­new­able en­er­gy in this coun­try based on the tour which took place be­tween Sep­tem­ber 26 to 30 in Chile, a state­ment from the min­istry ex­plained.

It said the min­istry se­lect­ed two par­tic­i­pants for the study tour from its re­new­able en­er­gy di­vi­sion and the Of­fice of the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary re­spec­tive­ly.

The team met with se­nior of­fi­cials from the Gov­ern­ment of Chile and had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to vis­it re­new­able en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture such as a green hy­dro­gen fa­cil­i­ty, a so­lar pho­to­volta­ic farm, a con­cen­trat­ed so­lar pow­er plant, a ge­ot­her­mal plant and a wind farm.

The tour was part of tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance of­fered to the min­istry through an EU fund­ed ini­tia­tive, the Glob­al Cli­mate Change Al­liance Plus (GC­CA+).

Chile was cho­sen based on its suc­cess with ex­pand­ed grid-con­nect­ed re­new­able en­er­gy and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy, the min­istry said.

Pe­ter Cavendish, Am­bas­sador, Eu­ro­pean Union Del­e­ga­tion to T&T, said this coun­try is not on­ly per­ceived as a leader for en­er­gy, fi­nan­cial ser­vices and oth­er ar­eas but is al­so seen as “be­ing ca­pa­ble of in­no­va­tion and be­ing an agent of change.”

Young al­so not­ed that the largest so­lar project in the Cari­com Re­gion to­talling 112.2 MW, will soon be fi­nalised.