Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Af­ter years of stud­ies, strate­gies and pol­i­cy pro­pos­als, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy tran­si­tion re­mains large­ly on pa­per, with de­lays in ap­provals and im­ple­men­ta­tion threat­en­ing its abil­i­ty to meet its cli­mate com­mit­ments.

A new Cli­mate An­a­lyt­ics Caribbean (CAC) re­port, com­plet­ed last De­cem­ber but re­leased last month, ex­am­ined whether this coun­try is mak­ing suf­fi­cient progress to­wards the en­er­gy tran­si­tion com­mit­ments aris­ing from the Glob­al Stock­take (GST) un­der the Paris Agree­ment.

The GST is a com­pre­hen­sive as­sess­ment un­der the Paris Agree­ment every five years de­signed to eval­u­ate the world’s col­lec­tive progress on cli­mate ac­tion.

The re­port ac­knowl­edged T&T’s eco­nom­ic de­pen­dence on hy­dro­car­bons, not­ing that oil and gas con­tribute about 40 per cent of GDP and more than 80 per cent of ex­ports.

It ar­gued that this makes the coun­try’s tran­si­tion to green­er forms of en­er­gy par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult but al­so “in­creas­ing­ly ur­gent” as glob­al mar­kets grad­u­al­ly de­car­bonise.

CAC stat­ed that T&T pos­sess­es many of the in­gre­di­ents need­ed to be­come a re­gion­al leader in re­new­able en­er­gy. Those in­clude decades of en­er­gy ex­per­tise, so­phis­ti­cat­ed in­fra­struc­ture, ex­pe­ri­enced tech­ni­cal pro­fes­sion­als and sev­er­al pol­i­cy roadmaps cov­er­ing re­new­able en­er­gy, green hy­dro­gen and wind pow­er.

How­ev­er, lag­ging im­ple­men­ta­tion con­tin­ues to stall the process. The re­port stat­ed many key poli­cies re­main in draft form, ap­proval process­es are slow and na­tion­al at­ten­tion re­mains heav­i­ly fo­cused on ex­pand­ing nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion.

Ko­ry Hall, who au­thored the re­port, told Guardian Me­dia last week, “The risk for T&T is not in our tech­ni­cal abil­i­ty to tran­si­tion, but rather the short-term eco­nom­ic pres­sures that fre­quent­ly de­lay the pol­i­cy and in­vest­ment de­ci­sions need­ed for long-term com­pet­i­tive­ness and at­trac­tive­ness...

“Fail­ure in our con­text would mean wait­ing un­til fos­sil fu­el de­mand de­creas­es to the point that glob­al mar­kets make the tran­si­tion for us, un­der far less favourable eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances.”

In his re­port, Hall point­ed to frag­ment­ed gov­er­nance where elec­tric­i­ty, pow­er gen­er­a­tion and cli­mate com­mit­ments are man­aged by dif­fer­ent min­istries.

Pressed on whether this is slow­ing the en­er­gy tran­si­tion, he said, “For long-term plan­ning pur­pos­es, it is a con­straint. Re­new­able en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment is not just a tech­no­log­i­cal is­sue as it is sup­port­ed by co­or­di­nat­ed de­ci­sions on elec­tric­i­ty reg­u­la­tion, land use, plan­ning ap­provals, grid ac­cess, in­vest­ment pol­i­cy, pub­lic fi­nance and na­tion­al cli­mate tar­gets.

“With these re­spon­si­bil­i­ties spread across sev­er­al min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lios and reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies, each may be act­ing with­in its own man­date, but the over­all process be­comes bur­den­some and less at­trac­tive to project de­vel­op­ers and in­vestors. This strat­e­gy ne­ces­si­tates the cre­ation of an em­pow­ered co­or­di­nat­ing au­thor­i­ty to en­sure that projects don’t be­come trapped be­tween in­sti­tu­tions, and pro­motes ac­count­abil­i­ty when tar­gets are missed or projects are de­layed.”

CAC di­rec­tor, Ruean­na Haynes, who re­viewed the re­port told Guardian Me­dia the coun­try’s lead­ers may be look­ing at the en­er­gy tran­si­tion in the wrong way.

She said, “Pol­i­cy­mak­ers may be look­ing at the tran­si­tion from a pure­ly na­tion­al­is­tic lens. This would be a mis­take that could lead to the per­cep­tion that the tran­si­tion is much hard­er, more ex­pen­sive and less ben­e­fi­cial than it ac­tu­al­ly could be.

As the re­port high­lights, there is much to gain from tak­ing a re­gion­al ap­proach es­pe­cial­ly with in­sti­tu­tion­al and pol­i­cy arrange­ments al­ready in place such as CSERMS (Caribbean Sus­tain­able En­er­gy Roadmap and Strat­e­gy) and CCREEE (Caribbean Cen­tre for Re­new­able En­er­gy and En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy).

Deep­er re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion in­clud­ing on this is­sue of en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty is what is need­ed in or­der to put T&T and the rest of Cari­com in the best po­si­tion to weath­er the com­ing storms.”

Haynes tout­ed an un­tapped re­gion­al ap­proach to en­er­gy tran­si­tion. She added, “One of the main ben­e­fits from deep­er re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion is scale of pro­cure­ment, which would de­crease the unit cost of tech­nol­o­gy be­ing ac­quired and de­ployed for the Green en­er­gy tran­si­tion. These re­gion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion modal­i­ties can cre­ate a more favourable cli­mate for in­vestors in clean en­er­gy. Shared pro­cure­ment and har­monised reg­u­la­tions re­duce the risk that in­vestors will per­ceive per MWh in­stalled, which should in turn re­duce the cost of cap­i­tal.

How­ev­er, fi­nanc­ing the en­er­gy tran­si­tion for Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States re­mains the biggest chal­lenge.

She stat­ed, “There is much to be done at both the na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els on the is­sue of fi­nance. The in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial ar­chi­tec­ture is not at present very re­spon­sive to the needs and re­al­i­ties of SIDS. This is a cli­mate jus­tice as well as a de­vel­op­ment is­sue. On the oth­er hand, as the re­port high­lights, un­lock­ing re­new­able en­er­gy at scale will re­quire not on­ly in­no­v­a­tive fi­nan­cial in­stru­ments and risk mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies, but al­so tar­get­ed na­tion­al-lev­el pol­i­cy re­forms that build in­vestor con­fi­dence while en­sur­ing eq­ui­table re­turns for peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties.”

Hall in­sist­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ties for tech­ni­cal tran­si­tion are sec­tors that build on ca­pa­bil­i­ties al­ready pos­sessed by the work­force in­clud­ing project de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial man­age­ment, so­lar in­stal­la­tion, en­gi­neer­ing, op­er­a­tions, main­te­nance, grid ser­vices and en­er­gy stor­age.

Asked what pri­or­i­ty ar­eas the Gov­ern­ment should be fo­cus­ing on, he said the first one should be the “es­tab­lish­ment of a sin­gle, ac­count­able na­tion­al de­liv­ery mech­a­nism” for the en­er­gy tran­si­tion. The sec­ond pri­or­i­ty, he said, must tar­get the re­moval of the reg­u­la­to­ry and com­mer­cial bar­ri­ers that are pre­vent­ing re­new­able en­er­gy projects from mov­ing at scale. Fi­nal­ly, Hall stat­ed fo­cus must be placed on the hu­man el­e­ment by demon­strat­ing that the en­er­gy tran­si­tion is di­rect­ly linked to eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and work­force de­vel­op­ment.

For T&T, the re­port sug­gests the en­er­gy tran­si­tion is no longer a ques­tion of whether it can hap­pen, but whether the coun­try can move quick­ly enough to shape its own fu­ture. With glob­al en­er­gy mar­kets shift­ing and cli­mate com­mit­ments be­com­ing more de­mand­ing, the choic­es made to­day could de­ter­mine whether the tran­si­tion be­comes an op­por­tu­ni­ty for eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion or a chal­lenge im­posed by ex­ter­nal forces. The next phase, ex­perts say, will re­quire turn­ing plans in­to ac­tion, break­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al bar­ri­ers and en­sur­ing cit­i­zens ben­e­fit from the trans­for­ma­tion ahead.