As part of its ex­pan­sion of the na­tion­al net­work for elec­tric ve­hi­cle in­fra­struc­ture, Na­tion­al En­er­gy, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, has of­fi­cial­ly hand­ed over three elec­tric ve­hi­cle (EV) charg­ing sta­tions, along with 11 LED and 29 so­lar-pow­ered LED perime­ter lights to Queen’s Hall, Port of Spain.

“This ini­tia­tive aims to pro­vide clean­er, en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient in­fra­struc­ture for the pub­lic while achiev­ing en­er­gy sav­ings at one of the na­tion’s pre­mier cul­tur­al venues,” the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries said in a state­ment.

Speak­ing at the cer­e­mo­ny to mark the in­stal­la­tions, Min­is­ter Stu­art Young high­light­ed the im­por­tance of the project:

“This is a yet an­oth­er step in re­duc­ing our car­bon foot­print and pro­mot­ing en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy in pub­lic spaces,” he not­ed. “As I have stat­ed pre­vi­ous­ly, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy tran­si­tion in­volves a bal­ance, with nat­ur­al gas re­main­ing es­sen­tial, while we in­cor­po­rate re­new­able so­lu­tions to meet our in­ter­na­tion­al cli­mate change oblig­a­tions, si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly build­ing a sus­tain­able fu­ture for all cit­i­zens.”

He added: “These so­lar LED lights will pro­vide Queen’s Hall with en­er­gy sav­ings of up to 75% com­pared to the pre­vi­ous­ly in­stalled sys­tems, and is a prime ex­am­ple of an En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial and Gov­er­nance Ini­tia­tive."

Garfield George, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Queen’s Hall, said the in­stal­la­tions have ush­ered the venue in­to a new era of en­vi­ron­men­tal sen­si­tiv­i­ty.

“This part­ner­ship has po­si­tioned Queen’s Hall as an ac­tive par­tic­i­pant in en­vi­ron­men­tal com­mit­ment,” George said. “We are proud to demon­strate how cul­tur­al in­sti­tu­tions can em­brace en­vi­ron­men­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.”

Min­is­ter Young high­light­ed the gov­ern­ment’s vi­sion in the ar­eas of clean trans­porta­tion and EV in­te­gra­tion through the cham­pi­oning of ini­tia­tives such as V.A.T. ex­emp­tions for elec­tric ve­hi­cles. He al­so chal­lenged Queen’s Hall to go fur­ther by aim­ing to be­come a green build­ing space with the fur­ther ad­di­tion of so­lar in­te­gra­tion in­to its op­er­a­tions.

“These small changes, which lead to en­hanced sus­tain­abil­i­ty and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy, have knock on ef­fects on the en­er­gy sec­tor,” he ob­served. “This Queens Hall Project rep­re­sents prop­er uti­liza­tion of nat­ur­al gas with­in the pow­er gen­er­a­tion sec­tor, which is aligned with the gov­ern­ment’s goal of ac­cru­ing high­er re­turns on nat­ur­al gas mol­e­cules, and there­by en­sur­ing max­i­mum ben­e­fits for the re­source own­ers, the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The En­er­gy Min­istry notes that the in­stal­la­tions at Queen’s Hall com­ple­ment oth­er projects led by Na­tion­al En­er­gy, such as the EV charg­ing sta­tions at Preysal and the col­lab­o­ra­tion on so­lar-pow­ered EV charg­ers at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St. Au­gus­tine.