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Monday, August 11, 2025

EMA to measure local greenhouse gas emissions

by

Sharlene Rampersad
2343 days ago
20190313
Allyson West

Allyson West

In an ef­fort to meet the re­quire­ments of the Unit­ed Na­tions Paris agree­ment on cli­mate change, this coun­try is pi­lot­ing a Knowl­edge Man­age­ment Sys­tem (KMS) to mon­i­tor its green­house gas emis­sions.

At the launch of the KMS at the Hy­att Re­gency on Tues­day, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Allyson West told Guardian Me­dia that T&T is lead­ing the way in the Caribbean with the in­tro­duc­tion of the KMS, a part of T&T’s Na­tion­al Cli­mate Mit­i­ga­tion, Mon­i­tor­ing, Re­port and Ver­i­fi­ca­tion (MRV) sys­tem.

“We are lead­ing the way in the Caribbean in this ex­er­cise, we are in­tro­duc­ing a sys­tem which is be­ing launched to­day to al­low for bet­ter mon­i­tor­ing and re­port­ing on green gas emis­sions which is some­thing we have to re­port on and that will al­low us to bet­ter con­trol those emis­sions,” she said.

The Paris Agree­ment, adopt­ed by the UN in 2015 and signed by a num­ber of mem­ber states since then, stip­u­lates that coun­tries must con­tribute to the glob­al re­duc­tion of an­thro­pogenic (man-made) green­house gas­es that cause glob­al warm­ing.

The Paris Agree­ment seeks to re­strict glob­al tem­per­a­ture rise to 2 de­grees Cel­sius above pre-in­dus­tri­al lev­els with as­pi­ra­tions to fur­ther re­strict it to 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius.

West said T&T signed on to the agree­ment in 2018.

“Achiev­ing this ob­jec­tive is im­por­tant to the world, but more par­tic­u­lar­ly and crit­i­cal­ly so for small is­land de­vel­op­ing states, and there­fore Trinidad and To­ba­go, as the ad­verse im­pacts of cli­mate change can po­ten­tial­ly pose an ex­is­ten­tial threat to us in the long term.

“In an ef­fort to achieve this ob­jec­tive, coun­tries in­clud­ing T&T, have sub­mit­ted to the UN, their tar­gets for re­duc­ing green­house gas emis­sions un­der the Paris Agree­ment.”

She said the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) will be re­spon­si­ble for host­ing and man­ag­ing the KMS and out­lined the ben­e­fits to the coun­try of re­duc­ing CO2 and green­house gas emis­sions.

“Track­ing na­tion­al emis­sions and iden­ti­fy­ing op­tions and ways for re­duc­ing them will al­so pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for green growth, de­ploy­ing ad­vanced tech­nolo­gies, cre­at­ing jobs, max­imis­ing pro­duc­tion ef­fi­cien­cy, and ul­ti­mate­ly cre­ate a so­ci­ety that is ef­fi­cient, clean and pro­duc­tive while re­al­is­ing pos­i­tive eco­nom­ic growth.

“This is the di­rec­tion of the world, and T&T is de­ter­mined to cap­i­talise on, and max­imise these op­por­tu­ni­ties. The prop­er func­tion­ing of the MRV/KMS sys­tem, there­fore, forms a crit­i­cal part of the na­tion­al ma­chin­ery to­wards this end.”

West said the KMS was nec­es­sary be­cause be­fore its in­tro­duc­tion com­pa­nies were re­spon­si­ble for re­port­ing their own emis­sions and of­ten times, da­ta was in­com­plete or miss­ing.

“We have start­ed mon­i­tor­ing but this is go­ing to help us do it more ef­fi­cient­ly—we have been ask­ing var­i­ous com­pa­nies to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on their emis­sions, there were var­i­ous gaps in that in­for­ma­tion so this will al­low us to do it more ef­fi­cient­ly.”

Asked if there are any plans to in­tro­duce leg­is­la­tion and/or sanc­tions on com­pa­nies that pro­duce too much CO2, West said: “That is to de­pend on the law that is to come, so we are hav­ing a vol­un­tary mon­i­tor­ing and en­gage­ment process now with the pi­lot and af­ter we as­sess how that goes, we will de­ter­mine what leg­is­la­tion that we need to in­tro­duce.”

She was un­able to say, how­ev­er, when such leg­is­la­tion would be in­tro­duced.


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