More in­no­va­tors need to step for­ward as T&T will seek to ex­plore op­por­tu­ni­ties for de­car­bon­i­sa­tion.

In her ad­dress on day two of the En­er­gy Con­fer­ence, Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les not­ed the lim­it­ed num­ber of sub­scribers to a pro­gramme be­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute called Shap­ing the Fu­ture of In­no­va­tion.

The pro­gramme is a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Cariri, the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, the Eu­ro­pean Union and the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank which in­tends to ad­dress three crit­i­cal bar­ri­ers to in­no­va­tion.

How­ev­er, at the time of her speech, there had not been enough tak­ers.

“I’m shar­ing this be­cause I am aware that quite a num­ber of per­sons are not aware of this project but it is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant and I hope that hav­ing shared this with you, some of you will ac­tu­al­ly sub­mit projects in the next few days,” said the min­is­ter in her pre­sen­ta­tion.

She ex­plained: “The project seeks to di­rect­ly ad­dress three crit­i­cal bar­ri­ers to in­no­va­tion, one, in­no­va­tion fi­nanc­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the pri­vate sec­tor, two, rem­e­dy­ing the ab­sence of ded­i­cat­ed in-house tal­ent, es­pe­cial­ly in new tech­nolo­gies that can sup­port firm-lev­el in­no­va­tion; and syn­chro­nis­ing an ex­ist­ing un­co­or­di­nat­ed ecosys­tem com­pris­ing a wide range of ac­tors work­ing in si­los, ren­der­ing as­sis­tance to en­hance the com­pet­i­tive­ness and out­put of T&T’s small to medi­um en­ter­pris­es. “

She con­tin­ued: “The fi­nal, and one of the key com­po­nents of this pro­gramme is to sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of a bet­ter co­or­di­nat­ed In­no­va­tion Ecosys­tem, by build­ing ca­pac­i­ty amongst lo­cal in­no­va­tion stake­hold­ers to bet­ter co­or­di­nate ef­forts in im­ple­ment­ing the Na­tion­al In­no­va­tion Pol­i­cy of T&T.”

She told the au­di­ence in the pre­vi­ous tranch­es of the pro­gramme, out of a field of over 153 el­i­gi­ble SMEs, 15 firms were award­ed grant fund­ing to­talling US$7.5 mil­lion.

She added that a sec­ond call for pro­pos­als al­so closed in the fourth quar­ter of 2022 with an­oth­er round to open soon.

The Plan­ning Min­is­ter said this pro­gramme would play a role in T&T’s Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy, Vi­sion 2030, which al­so has the tar­get of “Build­ing Glob­al­ly Com­pet­i­tive Busi­ness­es.”

“The in­stru­men­tal goal of this theme is to fa­cil­i­tate a vi­brant busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment and a sup­port sys­tem lead­ing to a di­verse econ­o­my that is in­no­v­a­tive, com­pet­i­tive, and shar­ing the foun­da­tions and sup­ports to en­cour­age busi­ness­es and en­tre­pre­neurs to suc­ceed and be­come more com­pet­i­tive both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly,” Beck­les said.

She stressed that de­vel­op­ing in­no­va­tion was key to the con­tin­ued de­vel­op­ment of the econ­o­my, es­pe­cial­ly as T&T will have to start its nav­i­ga­tion away from an en­er­gy econ­o­my in time.

“We note that to sus­tain in­vest­ment be­yond the in­no­va­tion chal­lenge fund, it is nec­es­sary to gen­er­ate in­ter­est and ap­petite of the lo­cal in­vest­ment com­mu­ni­ty in fi­nanc­ing in­no­va­tion.

“Fur­ther­more, an ef­fi­cient process to col­late and re­port da­ta on key in­no­va­tion in­di­ca­tors will al­low T&T to bet­ter as­sess and mon­i­tor its progress in tran­si­tion­ing to an in­no­va­tion-dri­ven econ­o­my,” said Beck­les, who re­it­er­at­ed that her min­istry was work­ing con­tin­u­ous­ly “on frame­work to ad­dress cli­mate change, ozone de­ple­tion, de-car­bon­i­sa­tion, and re­new­able en­er­gy, so that T&T will be com­pli­ant with in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions and com­mit­ments, and suc­cess­ful­ly ad­vance the na­tion­al cli­mate change agen­da.”

Beck­les added that while the Ukraine war has pushed up com­mod­i­ty prices, it has al­so shown a hint at the fu­ture as the ear­ly piv­ots away from the re­liance on fos­sil fu­els were be­ing de­vel­oped or in some cas­es im­ple­ment­ed.

“While the war in Ukraine has raised fos­sil fu­el prices, the ef­fect of high­er en­er­gy prices on com­mod­i­ty prices and costs of ser­vices are al­ready be­ing felt glob­al­ly.

“The con­flict has high­light­ed fos­sil fu­el vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and catal­ysed in­vest­ment in re­new­able en­er­gy, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Eu­rope, as en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty has be­come a stark and sober­ing ne­ces­si­ty,” said Beck­les.

“So, what will the end of the war mean for en­er­gy economies? Will we see a re­duc­tion in the de­mand for fos­sil fu­el with in­creased re­new­able ca­pac­i­ty? The need to di­ver­si­fy through in­no­va­tion is one way to re­duce eco­nom­ic de­pen­den­cy on the sec­tor,” she said.

The need to di­ver­si­fy would serve T&T twofold, she ex­plained, as we need­ed to find new eco­nom­ic av­enues, while al­so pro­tect­ing the coun­try from the last­ing im­pacts of cli­mate change.

“T&T is in an anom­alous po­si­tion of be­ing a small is­land de­vel­op­ing state, yet al­so be­ing a green­house gas emit­ter.

“But this al­so presents im­mense op­por­tu­ni­ties to lever­age the char­ac­ter­is­tics and ex­per­tise of our in­dus­tri­al sec­tor to ad­vance the en­er­gy tran­si­tion in T&T, though in­no­va­tion and bold and trans­for­ma­tive think­ing,” she said, adding that the coun­try can­not con­tin­ue to its down­fall.

“Com­bust­ing fos­sil fu­els for en­er­gy has been iden­ti­fied sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly as the main cul­prit for hu­man-in­duced glob­al warm­ing and cli­mate change.

“Ac­cord­ing to the IPCC, in or­der to be con­sis­tent with glob­al emis­sion path­ways, glob­al net hu­man-gen­er­at­ed car­bon diox­ide emis­sions need to de­cline by about forty-five per cent from the 2010 lev­el by 2030, reach­ing net ze­ro around 2050,” she said.

“And so, in our coun­try, a small is­land de­vel­op­ing state with an oil and gas and petro­chem­i­cal-based econ­o­my, the tran­si­tion to low-car­bon de­vel­op­ment is an im­per­a­tive, and our gov­ern­ment is meet­ing that chal­lenge by cre­at­ing the leg­isla­tive, pol­i­cy, ad­min­is­tra­tive and en­abling en­vi­ron­ment to in­cen­tivise pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment in low-car­bon tech­nol­o­gy,” she said.

Beck­les said there had been in­no­va­tions all over the world which sug­gest­ed there could be sig­nif­i­cant progress through low-emis­sion in­no­va­tions, but much of the de­vel­op­ing world had so far been late to that par­ty.

“Steady tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vances of­fer op­por­tu­ni­ties for sig­nif­i­cant green­house gas abate­ment.

“The unit costs of sev­er­al low-emis­sion tech­nolo­gies have fall­en con­tin­u­ous­ly since 2010, and re­new­ables are the cheap­est form of pow­er to­day even af­ter the im­pacts of the (Ukraine war),” she said.

“There have been sus­tained de­creas­es in the unit costs of so­lar en­er­gy by 85 per cent, wind en­er­gy by 55 per cent, and lithi­um-ion bat­ter­ies by 85 per cent, with large in­creas­es in their de­ploy­ment; for ex­am­ple, more than ten times for so­lar and more than one hun­dred times for elec­tric ve­hi­cles (EVs).

“Amid climb­ing fos­sil fu­el prices, in­vest­ments in re­new­ables in 2021 saved fifty-five bil­lion US dol­lars in glob­al en­er­gy gen­er­a­tion costs in 2022. The num­bers speak for them­selves. How­ev­er, in­no­va­tion has lagged in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries due to weak­er en­abling con­di­tions.”

Min­is­ter Beck­les’ pre­sen­ta­tion came one day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley out­lined some of the plans, and chal­lenges, fac­ing the gov­ern­ment’s goal of achiev­ing 30 per cent use of re­new­able en­er­gy by the year 2030.