T&T ranks among largest car­bon diox­ide (CO2) emit­ters per capi­ta in the world. This is prin­ci­pal­ly at­trib­uted to the con­cen­tra­tion of heavy in­dus­tries op­er­at­ing with­in the na­tion and its com­par­a­tive­ly small pop­u­la­tion size. Nev­er­the­less, the coun­try’s ab­solute con­tri­bu­tion to glob­al car­bon diox­ide emis­sions re­mains be­low 0.1 per cent, much small­er than the ma­jor emit­ters such as the Chi­na (32 per cent), USA (12 per cent) and In­dia (7 per cent).

In Jan­u­ary 2025, the T&T Bi­en­ni­al Trans­paren­cy Re­port, was pub­lished on the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion for Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC) web­site.

This re­port out­lines the na­tion’s cli­mate change ac­tions, progress on trans­paren­cy, and com­mit­ment to sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment through en­hanced re­silience to cli­mate im­pacts and the re­duc­tion of green­house gas (GHG) emis­sions across all sec­tors. The green­house gas in­ven­to­ry, in­clud­ed with­in the re­port, iden­ti­fies the prin­ci­pal emit­ting sec­tors.

In 2022 the coun­try pro­duced 26,571.66 Gg of CO2. The petro­chem­i­cal and en­er­gy sec­tors con­sti­tute the largest source of car­bon diox­ide emis­sions.

Some 87 per cent of T&T’s emis­sions orig­i­nate from the pro­duc­tion of am­mo­nia, elec­tric­i­ty, methanol, liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas, iron and steel, and ce­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Emis­sions as­so­ci­at­ed with the pro­duc­tion of T&T’s gas-based ex­ports are fac­ing in­creas­ing scruti­ny. The Eu­ro­pean Union has ini­ti­at­ed the im­ple­men­ta­tion of new tar­iffs on im­ports of cer­tain petro­chem­i­cals and oth­er prod­ucts, such as ce­ment, based on the car­bon emis­sions as­so­ci­at­ed with their pro­duc­tion. Sev­er­al oth­er ma­jor economies, in­clud­ing the Unit­ed King­dom, have in­di­cat­ed their in­ten­tion to adopt sim­i­lar mech­a­nisms.

These mea­sures, known as car­bon bor­der ad­just­ment mech­a­nisms, aim to ad­dress “car­bon leak­age” by ad­just­ing the prices of com­modi­ties. This aims at pre­vent­ing pro­duc­ers cir­cum­vent­ing do­mes­tic car­bon tax­es in the im­port­ing mar­ket by re­lo­cat­ing pro­duc­tion to ju­ris­dic­tions lack­ing car­bon pric­ing mech­a­nisms.

Con­se­quent­ly, it is im­per­a­tive that proac­tive mea­sures be un­der­tak­en to mit­i­gate emis­sions.

With­in the elec­tric­i­ty sec­tor, three pri­ma­ry strate­gies can be pur­sued. First­ly, the con­ver­sion of all ex­ist­ing elec­tric­i­ty-gen­er­at­ing as­sets to com­bined cy­cle tech­nolo­gies would en­hance pro­duc­tion ef­fi­cien­cy by cap­tur­ing and re­uti­l­is­ing waste heat.

Sec­ond­ly, the in­tro­duc­tion of en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy mea­sures by con­sumers, with air con­di­tion­ing be­ing a ma­jor po­ten­tial area for in­creased ef­fi­cien­cy.

Third­ly, the in­te­gra­tion of re­new­able en­er­gy sources in­to the na­tion­al grid. This en­tails the im­ple­men­ta­tion of util­i­ty-scale projects, such as the Brechin Cas­tle ini­tia­tive and oth­er large-scale so­lar or wind farms, along­side the pro­mo­tion of small-scale dis­trib­uted gen­er­a­tion, in­clud­ing rooftop so­lar in­stal­la­tions.

For the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor and oth­er heavy in­dus­tries, the util­i­sa­tion of green hy­dro­gen presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty to off­set the de­mand for nat­ur­al gas. This would in­volve the use of re­new­able en­er­gy or oth­er car­bon-neu­tral elec­tric­i­ty sources for hy­dro­gen gen­er­a­tion from wa­ter. Tra­di­tion­al pro­duc­tion meth­ods for am­mo­nia and methanol re­ly on nat­ur­al gas to gen­er­ate hy­dro­gen, re­sult­ing in a sig­nif­i­cant car­bon foot­print.

Em­ploy­ing hy­dro­gen pro­duced from re­new­able en­er­gy sources would sub­stan­tial­ly re­duce car­bon emis­sions.

An­oth­er vi­able op­tion for the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor in­volves the adop­tion of car­bon cap­ture and se­ques­tra­tion tech­nolo­gies. This process en­tails cap­tur­ing car­bon diox­ide emis­sions from in­dus­tri­al process­es and sub­se­quent­ly lock­ing them away deep un­der­ground.

It is im­por­tant to set the right pol­i­cy frame­work to en­cour­age the ac­cel­er­a­tion of in­vest­ment in this type of ac­tiv­i­ty to re­duce emis­sions but al­so to en­sure that our en­er­gy ex­ports can ac­cess for­eign mar­kets.

All of these is­sue will be dis­cussed at the up­com­ing Caribbean Sus­tain­able En­er­gy Con­fer­ence on June 2 to 4, 2025.