En­er­gy Min­ster Stu­art Young and a team from the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries met with a del­e­ga­tion from the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease from the Min­istry, dis­cus­sions were cen­tred around the steps to­wards ad­vanc­ing the ini­tia­tives iden­ti­fied in the study The Roadmap for a Green Hy­dro­gen Econ­o­my in Trinidad and To­ba­go which was launched in No­vem­ber 2022.

Young and his team met with IDB coun­try head Ca­ri­na Cock­burn as well as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (Na­tion­al En­er­gy) and its pres­i­dent Dr Ver­non Pal­too.

The Min­istry of En­er­gy not­ed that in March 2023, Cab­i­net ap­proved a re­quest for sup­port from the IDB to ad­vance the ini­tia­tives in Hori­zon 1 of the Green Hy­dro­gen Roadmap in a spe­cif­ic project fo­cus­ing on:

• In­tro­duc­ing green hy­dro­gen demon­stra­tion projects in T&T;

• Ini­ti­at­ing the Wind Re­source As­sess­ment Pro­gramme (WRAP); and

• De­vel­op­ing the busi­ness mod­els and fi­nan­cial struc­tures for at­tract­ing pri­vate sec­tor in­vestors to the new green hy­dro­gen in­dus­try.

Since then, the min­istry said it had been work­ing in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the mem­bers of the IDB and Na­tion­al En­er­gy.

Min­is­ter Young wel­comed the dis­cus­sions and not­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ter­est in sup­port­ing the de­vel­op­ment of a green hy­dro­gen mar­ket through the par­tic­i­pa­tion of T&T’s state en­er­gy com­pa­nies such as Na­tion­al En­er­gy, while at the same time de­vel­op­ing a frame­work that is at­trac­tive for pri­vate sec­tor par­tic­i­pa­tion.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, Cock­burn ad­vised the IDB has al­ready made con­sid­er­able progress in the de­sign of the green hy­dro­gen project, which will have trans­for­ma­tion­al im­pact on the coun­try in the medi­um and long term.

Ac­cord­ing to Cock­burn, in the in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy mar­ket, coun­tries are look­ing for low-car­bon en­er­gy prod­ucts as part of their en­er­gy tran­si­tion ini­tia­tives, and T&T is well poised to strength­en its re­gion­al and glob­al lead­er­ship in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

The par­ties agreed that the IDB would hold fur­ther con­sul­ta­tions with lo­cal stake­hold­ers and con­tin­ue to work with the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries in the de­ploy­ment of low or ze­ro car­bon prod­ucts based on re­new­able en­er­gy and green hy­dro­gen.