The re­al­i­ty of T&T’s des­per­ate need for re­new­able en­er­gy projects is be­ing high­light­ed in the news of the dif­fi­cul­ties be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced at present by four plants on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate in re­ceiv­ing sup­plies of nat­ur­al gas.

It is a dif­fi­cul­ty that has oc­curred on a few oc­ca­sions in the im­me­di­ate past, the At­lantic Train 1 fa­cil­i­ty be­ing the most dra­mat­ic ex­am­ple.

At this time, lo­cal pro­duc­tion of petro­chem­i­cals is be­ing im­pact­ed by the shut­down of nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion, due to an un­planned tech­ni­cal is­sue, at an up­stream sup­pli­er.

The lo­cal econ­o­my has been de­pen­dent for over 100 years on oil, and with the mat­u­ra­tion of oil fields, has be­come in­creas­ing­ly re­liant on the nat­ur­al gas in­dus­try for its rel­a­tive­ly pros­per­ous ex­is­tence com­pared to oth­er Cari­com coun­tries.

But with the sup­ply of nat­ur­al gas not meet­ing the in­stalled pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty of petro­chem­i­cal plants at Point Lisas and LNG at Point Fortin, T&T finds it­self in an ex­treme­ly pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion.

The de­ci­sion by the US Gov­ern­ment in Jan­u­ary 2023 to grant T&T a carve out from Amer­i­can sanc­tions on Venezuela, pro­vid­ed some hope that the Drag­on nat­ur­al gas field would be the an­swer to T&T’s gas sup­ply prob­lem–at least in the medi­um term.

But with the US ap­par­ent­ly re­fus­ing to re­lent on its in­sis­tence that T&T must not pay Venezuela in cash for nat­ur­al gas from the Drag­on field, and with T&T's clos­est neigh­bour right­ly in­sist­ing on cash, this coun­try faces a huge dilem­ma.

One for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter, Kevin Ram­nar­ine told the Guardian last week there are still pos­si­bil­i­ties for Drag­on Gas to flow here.

Com­bined with such a pos­si­bil­i­ty, there are po­ten­tial sources of gas finds and pro­duc­tion from res­i­dent com­pa­nies such as Wood­side En­er­gy with its Ca­lyp­so field es­ti­mat­ed to hold six tril­lion cu­bic feet in T&T’s deep wa­ter province.

The ma­jor chal­lenge now fac­ing T&T is to turn with vigour and ex­pe­di­tion to non-fos­sil fu­el sources for en­er­gy while re­main­ing ag­gres­sive about the nat­ur­al gas de­vel­op­ments.

The sources of re­new­able en­er­gy are quite a few, T&T be­ing washed by the At­lantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea; the fierce­ness of the rays of the sun around us al­most 12 months per year; the wind; the pow­er­ful streams of wa­ter; they all seem in­ex­haustible to po­ten­tial­ly sup­ply en­er­gy to meet our needs.

At the mo­ment, the Or­ange Grove So­lar PV Project and the Pi­ar­co So­lar Pow­er plant are in vary­ing stages of com­ple­tion and op­er­a­tion. There al­so have been in­di­vid­ual so­lar fa­cil­i­ties on the roofs of homes and small busi­ness op­er­a­tions; they can aug­ment and re­place gas-dri­ven elec­tric­i­ty sup­plies.

A sur­vey by the World Bank back in 2020 es­ti­mat­ed that such projects in their in­fan­cy stage can pro­duce less than one per cent of the elec­tric­i­ty needs of the coun­try.

So while there is a start-up ef­fort in the re­new­able en­er­gy in­dus­try here, the road to the fu­ture of sus­tain­able en­er­gy sup­plies, en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, and even an ex­port in­dus­try, the jour­ney has to start in earnest in the present.

T&T’s de­pen­dence on hy­dro­car­bons, and the rel­a­tive ease through which the in­vest­ments by sev­er­al multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions with so­phis­ti­cat­ed tech­nol­o­gy, ex­per­tise, and large in­vest­ment cap­i­tal to ex­tract and process oil and gas and ex­port same, has proven to be a com­fort zone for gov­ern­ments seek­ing rents to pay for the es­sen­tials of cit­i­zens.

That era is clos­ing fast.