Kevon Felmine

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter-des­ig­nate Stu­art Young is look­ing ahead with op­ti­mism, ex­press­ing his com­mit­ment to steer­ing T&T to­wards its full po­ten­tial. Young, who is set to suc­ceed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in the com­ing weeks, shared his vi­sion at the launch of the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Skills Cen­tre’s (NESC) Re­new­able En­er­gy Tech­nol­o­gy Ser­vices (RETS) Pro­gramme at the Point Lisas cam­pus.

Speak­ing at the event, he high­light­ed the pro­gramme’s sig­nif­i­cance as an in­vest­ment in youth, the en­er­gy sec­tor, and a clean­er en­vi­ron­ment. He ex­pressed hope that the Gov­ern­ment would ex­pand such ini­tia­tives.

“I am look­ing for­ward to the next chap­ter of my life in tak­ing us all for­ward to where I be­lieve we have the po­ten­tial to go, and I am look­ing for­ward to that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that our young cit­i­zens, our old­er cit­i­zens who have the wis­dom and ex­pe­ri­ence, that we all come to­geth­er in a uni­fied man­ner, with a sense of uni­ty, break­ing bar­ri­ers that should not ex­ist and tak­ing our Trinidad and To­ba­go for­ward to where we de­serve to be,” Young said. Pressed on his broad­er plans for the coun­try, Young re­mained re­served, stat­ing that lead­er­ship was about con­ti­nu­ity and there was no need for anx­i­ety over the tran­si­tion.

Dis­miss­ing spec­u­la­tion of in­ter­nal dis­cord with­in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, he re­marked, “If you shine the light else­where, you will find the con­fu­sion you are look­ing for.”

The NESC’s new pro­gramme of­fers 12 schol­ar­ships, with stu­dents set to study pho­to­volta­ic and wind tur­bine tech­nol­o­gy, hy­dro­gen and ge­ot­her­mal sys­tems, and en­tre­pre­neur­ship. Ad­dress­ing the stu­dents, Young un­der­scored T&T’s lead­er­ship in en­er­gy tran­si­tion.

Un­like some Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) na­tions with­out oil and gas re­sources, he ex­plained, T&T must bal­ance hy­dro­car­bon ex­ploita­tion to fund es­sen­tial ser­vices while al­so ad­dress­ing cli­mate change. This, he said, is where re­new­able en­er­gy comes in­to play.

T&T is cur­rent­ly con­struct­ing the Cari­com re­gion’s largest so­lar pow­er in­fra­struc­ture, gen­er­at­ing 92MW, and is in the sec­ond phase of iden­ti­fy­ing ide­al lo­ca­tions for wind tur­bines.

“We com­plet­ed the first study and have de­ployed five wind mea­sure­ment units in strate­gic lo­ca­tions,” he re­vealed.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, NGC Green is en­gaged in the coun­try’s first green hy­dro­gen project. How­ev­er, Young cau­tioned stu­dents against mis­in­for­ma­tion, not­ing that green hy­dro­gen has yet to be­come com­mer­cial­ly vi­able.

“We have two projects un­der­way, as­sess­ing com­mer­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty. The Gov­ern­ment has al­so com­mis­sioned a pi­lot project that will gen­er­ate green hy­dro­gen us­ing re­new­able elec­tric­i­ty and feed it in­to our ad­vanced in­dus­tri­al plants right here in Point Lisas.”

Young en­cour­aged stu­dents to em­brace the op­por­tu­ni­ties emerg­ing in the re­new­able en­er­gy sec­tor.

“We are on the verge of some­thing big. This is our time. Young cit­i­zens now have the chance to take up lead­er­ship—whether in re­new­ables, en­er­gy, or be­yond. Jobs will be avail­able not just in so­lar but al­so in wind gen­er­a­tion.”

He al­so high­light­ed T&T’s pi­o­neer­ing move as the first Cari­com coun­try to re­move du­ties and VAT on elec­tric ve­hi­cles, po­si­tion­ing it­self as a leader in sus­tain­able en­er­gy adop­tion.

Fur­ther­more, the Gov­ern­ment has ap­proved an­oth­er so­lar project in north­east­ern Trinidad, where quar­ry lands will be re­pur­posed with so­lar pan­els to feed in­to the na­tion­al grid.

“The more we in­te­grate re­new­ables, the more gas we can sell while do­ing our part to clean up the en­vi­ron­ment.”

Off­shore gas projects, Young said, are pro­gress­ing well, stim­u­lat­ing ac­tiv­i­ty in the ser­vice in­dus­try. How­ev­er, he ex­pressed con­cern over mis­in­for­ma­tion on so­cial me­dia, lament­ing that young peo­ple to­day face chal­lenges dis­tin­guish­ing fact from fic­tion.

“I feel sor­ry for the mis­in­for­ma­tion you’re be­ing fed. When I was your age, we did not have so­cial me­dia spread­ing in­ac­cu­ra­cies.”