Joel Julien

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young says he has hope for this coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor fol­low­ing re­cent de­vel­op­ments.

Among those re­cent de­vel­op­ments were the sign­ing of agree­ments last week for the re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG and the large scale so­lar project, as well as projects he saw from pri­ma­ry school stu­dents yes­ter­day at Pen­na­cool’s sci­ence and con­ser­va­tion fair.

The pen­na­cool Sci­ence and Con­ser­va­tion Fair was held at bpTT head of­fice at Queen’s Park West yes­ter­day.

Pen­na­cool.com is a free on­line ed­u­ca­tion­al web­site tar­get­ed to­wards pri­ma­ry school stu­dents.

“Ex­act­ly a week ago we had the sign­ing of the fu­ture of At­lantic LNG, the fu­ture of our en­er­gy which is go­ing to be one of the clean gas­es that is go­ing to pro­mote en­er­gy in the fu­ture. Then last week Fri­day I am very hap­py that along with the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties again we had the par­tic­i­pa­tion of BP and Shell in get­ting the largest so­lar project, an agree­ment signed let us break the ground and put 112 MW on the ground.

“I think it is im­por­tant that these mile­stones be recog­nised but then we come to to­day, and to come to­day and see you 12 young chil­dren be­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the 13,000 pri­ma­ry school chil­dren par­tic­i­pat­ing in a project like this I am re­al­ly, re­al­ly hap­py,” Young said.

The 12 fi­nal­ists were cho­sen out of over 80 sub­mis­sions.

The pen­na­cool pro­gramme is avail­able free to stu­dents through part­ner­ships with Shell, bpTT and the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties.

“Com­ing to events like this gives me hope as a cit­i­zen of T&T that you the chil­dren are go­ing to car­ry of us for­ward when we pass the ba­ton to you,” Young said.

“I don’t know if you all in the room un­der­stand the sig­nif­i­cance of what we are see­ing here to­day in hav­ing two en­er­gy com­pa­nies like Shell and bp, which are huge multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies, take the time, the ef­fort and the fi­nances and al­so the in­ter­est in pro­mot­ing a pro­gramme like that right here in Trinidad,” he said.

“I have been telling the Cab­i­net in the last cou­ple weeks en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy is some­thing that we need to pro­mote.”

He said he be­lieves this should be start­ed with the na­tion’s chil­dren.

“I am try­ing to push T&T be­cause if we are to stay com­pet­i­tive in the en­er­gy in­dus­try we have to do so re­spon­si­bly and we have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to clean up the en­vi­ron­ment as much as we can and I am proud of us here in T&T that we are do­ing that,” he said.

Young urged the young peo­ple to go back to their schools and their com­mu­ni­ties to en­cour­age fur­ther pos­i­tive think­ing.

“BP and Shell, I sin­cere­ly thank you all as a cit­i­zen of T&T, not as a min­is­ter, be­cause I have worked with you all and seen first hand the in­vest­ments you all are pre­pared to make for T&T and that is a some­thing we need to be grate­ful about even as we sit and ne­go­ti­ate the en­er­gy deals to car­ry us for­ward in the fu­ture,” Young said.

The top three stu­dents se­lect­ed were Aiden Ma­hase from Dayanand Memo­r­i­al Vedic with his Float­ing House, Val­don Ramdeo from St He­le­na Hin­du with his En­er­gy Sav­ing Home, and Lo­gan Nicholas from El Do­ra­do North Hin­du with his Air Pol­lu­tion project.