As Cari­com lead­ers met in St Kitts and Nevis for the 50th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment, with re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty high on the agen­da, Pro­man and Pow­er32 urged pol­i­cy­mak­ers to con­sid­er Trinidad- pro­duced methanol as a prac­ti­cal so­lu­tion to the re­gion’s pow­er gen­er­a­tion chal­lenges.

In a news re­lease Tues­day, the com­pa­nies high­light­ed the con­tin­ued re­liance across the re­gion on im­port­ed diesel and heavy fu­el oil to pow­er ag­ing elec­tric­i­ty in­fra­struc­ture. That de­pen­dence ex­pos­es small economies to volatile glob­al oil prices while main­tain­ing high­er emis­sions lev­els.

Ac­cord­ing to Pro­man and its sub­sidiary Pow­er32, Caribbean gov­ern­ments face a trilem­ma, se­cur­ing a re­li­able sup­ply, keep­ing elec­tric­i­ty af­ford­able and re­duc­ing emis­sions at the same time.

The com­pa­ny stat­ed that methanol of­fers a low­er-emis­sion al­ter­na­tive that can be de­ployed with­out ma­jor new in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ment. Un­like LNG, methanol is a liq­uid at room tem­per­a­ture and does not re­quire spe­cialised cryo­genic stor­age or re­gasi­fi­ca­tion ter­mi­nals. Ex­ist­ing liq­uid fu­el in­fra­struc­ture can of­ten be adapt­ed, low­er­ing up­front cap­i­tal costs for is­land states.

On com­bus­tion, methanol pro­duces sig­nif­i­cant­ly few­er pol­lu­tants than diesel and heavy fu­el oil. The com­pa­nies state that it emits about 80 per cent less ni­tro­gen ox­ides (NOx) and al­most no sul­phur ox­ides (SOx) or par­tic­u­late mat­ter. Con­ven­tion­al methanol pro­duced from nat­ur­al gas, there­fore, de­liv­ers im­me­di­ate air qual­i­ty im­prove­ments.

Anand Rag­bir, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Pro­man Trinidad, said re­gion­al lead­ers should lever­age ex­ist­ing pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty.

“We are ask­ing Cari­com lead­ers to look close to home for a pow­er so­lu­tion. Methanol pro­duced lo­cal­ly in Trinidad can be eas­i­ly and safe­ly shipped to our neigh­bours to pro­vide clean­er out­comes with few­er fu­el miles and greater en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty. This re­al­ly is a Caribbean pow­er so­lu­tion, made in the Caribbean, for the Caribbean,”
Rag­bir said.

The re­lease not­ed that the methanol mol­e­cule re­mains the same re­gard­less of feed­stock, al­low­ing con­ven­tion­al prod­uct to be blend­ed over time with low­er-car­bon al­ter­na­tives pro­duced us­ing car­bon cap­ture, util­i­sa­tion and stor­age (CCUS) as well as green methanol. This tran­si­tion can oc­cur with­out ad­di­tion­al on-is­land in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ment.

David Knipe, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Pow­er32, said the com­pa­ny was es­tab­lished to de­liv­er methanol-pow­ered so­lu­tions at scale. Pro­man es­tab­lished Pow­er32 to de­liv­er methanol-pow­ered so­lu­tions at scale, and we see a spe­cif­ic ben­e­fit for the is­land na­tions near our pro­duc­tion hub in Trinidad. Break­ing the con­nec­tion with volatile oil and diesel pric­ing would have an im­me­di­ate, pos­i­tive im­pact on lo­cal economies.”

He added that low­er an­nu­al fu­el im­port bills would al­low gov­ern­ments to redi­rect sav­ings in­to growth and de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives rather than ab­sorb fluc­tu­at­ing en­er­gy costs.

Pro­man and Pow­er32 main­tain that methanol can com­ple­ment re­new­able en­er­gy ex­pan­sion by pro­vid­ing sta­ble gen­er­a­tion as grids tran­si­tion, po­si­tion­ing Caribbean-pro­duced fu­el as a near-term bridge to­ward a low­er-emis­sion re­gion­al elec­tric­i­ty mar­ket.