Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go has spent more than a cen­tu­ry mas­ter­ing the busi­ness of en­er­gy. The ques­tion now is whether that ex­per­tise can pow­er the coun­try’s next eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion—or leave it be­hind. Around the world, the race is no longer just to pro­duce clean en­er­gy. It is to man­u­fac­ture the tech­nolo­gies, fu­els and ma­te­ri­als that will de­fine the next in­dus­tri­al econ­o­my. It is well doc­u­ment­ed that T&T has a head­start in this race, not sole­ly be­cause of the in­fra­struc­ture that ex­ists at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, but al­so the ex­per­tise that lies in the na­tion’s hu­man cap­i­tal.

But hav­ing the in­gre­di­ents for suc­cess does not guar­an­tee the out­come. Across the coun­try, ques­tions re­main over whether T&T is mov­ing fast enough to at­tract green in­vest­ment, de­vel­op new in­dus­tries and pre­pare its work­force for the de­mands of the en­er­gy tran­si­tion.

Pro­fes­sor of Process En­gi­neer­ing at UTT, Don­nie Bood­lal, told the Sun­day Guardian this coun­try is in a pe­cu­liar po­si­tion.

“We’re blessed with nat­ur­al re­sources, oil and nat­ur­al gas, and though these have been de­plet­ing in pro­duc­tion over the years, it has dom­i­nat­ed our land­scape for the last 30 to 35 years. Be­cause of that, the pric­ing en­vi­ron­ment for en­er­gy was low. There was no re­al need for or in­cen­tive for tran­si­tion­ing com­pared to oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion. Hav­ing said that, be­cause of oth­er is­sues and dri­vers, there would have been many times be­fore and present where we were try­ing, pol­i­cy-wise and oth­er­wise tran­si­tion­ing. I have not seen the sus­tained mo­men­tum in that area.”

Kis­han Ku­mars­ingh, who steered T&T’s cli­mate change poli­cies for near­ly three decades be­fore re­sign­ing from the Min­istry of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs, and De­vel­op­ment in Ju­ly, said there is no ad­van­tage if the cor­rect pol­i­cy, leg­isla­tive, in­sti­tu­tion­al, ad­min­is­tra­tive, and gov­er­nance struc­tures aren’t put in place.

He said, “If the en­abling en­vi­ron­ment is not put in place, then no amount of fi­nance, in­clud­ing a large amount of in­vest­ment that is avail­able, can be of any use.”

Ku­mars­ingh said glob­al in­vest­ment in clean en­er­gy and the broad­er en­er­gy tran­si­tion has reached record lev­els, to­talling ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2.2 tril­lion to $2.3 tril­lion an­nu­al­ly, ac­cord­ing to track­ing by the In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Agency (IEA) and BloombergNEF (BNEF).

This heav­i­ly out­paces the rough­ly $1.1 tril­lion spent glob­al­ly on tra­di­tion­al fos­sil fu­els.

“So, while the coun­try al­ready has a head start with re­spect to its hu­man ex­per­tise, in­dus­tri­al ex­pe­ri­ence and en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture, there still needs to be that har­monised pol­i­cy frame­work to at­tract these in­vest­ments,” Ku­mars­ingh added.

He ref­er­enced the idling of the Brechin Cas­tle so­lar park, which he said does not bode well for green in­vest­ment.

He said, “It sug­gests that the coun­try can­not plan for, nor man­age such in­vest­ments and sends a bad sig­nal for in­vestors. This points de­cid­ed­ly in the di­rec­tion of a lack of a har­monised en­abling en­vi­ron­ment.”

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Bar­ry Padarath, whose port­fo­lio now in­cludes re­new­able en­er­gy, told the Sun­day Guardian the idling of the Brechin Cas­tle so­lar farm was “alarm­ing, con­cern­ing, and sur­pris­ing” to him, but it al­so showed there is a need for the de­vel­op­ment of poli­cies in a holis­tic man­ner to en­sure there is eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion.

He said this is key giv­en the Gov­ern­ment is cur­rent­ly work­ing on a num­ber of re­new­able en­er­gy projects that will be an­nounced and rolled out in the com­ing weeks and months.

Padarath stat­ed, “While a lot of this thrust is hap­pen­ing, it will in­ten­si­fy over the next cou­ple months, in par­tic­u­lar, as it re­lates to sev­er­al of the projects that have been enun­ci­at­ed by the Gov­ern­ment in terms of in­vest­ment projects, but it has to hap­pen holis­ti­cal­ly. It can­not hap­pen in si­los. How do you har­monise both to en­sure that you get max­i­mum ben­e­fit and you don’t end up with white ele­phants, like what is oc­cur­ring in Brechin Cas­tle right now?”

Bood­lal al­so gave a sim­i­lar warn­ing, say­ing that poli­cies can­not be de­vel­oped by the Gov­ern­ment alone.

He said, “We need to do stake­hold­er map­ping. We need to iden­ti­fy the key stake­hold­ers. We need to start hav­ing the stake­hold­ers in one room where the dis­cus­sions can be had, where we look at our out­comes that we’re look­ing for, and then come up with ini­tia­tives, un­der­stand­ing the en­vi­ron­ment we op­er­ate in and there­fore the gaps, lever­ag­ing on strate­gic part­ner­ships in the re­gion and out­side to fill the gaps. I don’t be­lieve a plan be­ing de­vel­oped in one area and im­posed on oth­ers will work.”

Padarath ad­mit­ted there is an over­re­liance on tra­di­tion­al forms of en­er­gy in T&T.

He added, “I think in light of what we are see­ing hap­pen­ing glob­al­ly, there is a need to di­ver­si­fy and move away from that very iso­lat­ed ap­proach of us­ing tra­di­tion­al forms of en­er­gy. In the past, we have com­plained, whether it is pri­vate sec­tor or the op­po­si­tion or gov­ern­ment, about the lack of in­vest­ment in terms of re­new­able en­er­gy and the use of re­new­able en­er­gy in our econ­o­my. I think this is the right op­por­tu­ni­ty, es­pe­cial­ly when you’re look­ing at new projects, you’re look­ing at new in­vest­ments, to go in that par­tic­u­lar di­rec­tion. Ob­vi­ous­ly, there will be a bal­ance.”

How­ev­er, Padarath said he had to be re­al­is­tic in the time­line of de­vel­op­ment for re­new­able en­er­gy in this coun­try.

He added, “I’m not say­ing to­mor­row that there will be this huge in­vest­ment in the re­new­able en­er­gy, mov­ing away from tra­di­tion­al forms of en­er­gy. But what I am say­ing is that you will see an in­ten­si­fied ap­proach to­wards in­tro­duc­ing re­new­able en­er­gies in a more tan­gi­ble way in­to the projects, whether it is through di­rect in­vest­ment or whether it is through the cre­ation of new in­dus­tries, et cetera. So that com­mit­ment is there. But ob­vi­ous­ly, you work with­in the lim­it­ed en­vi­ron­ment and space for that.”

In the race for the in­dus­tries of the fu­ture, T&T’s great­est ad­van­tage may not be its nat­ur­al gas re­serves, but how ef­fec­tive­ly it us­es them to build what comes next.