On Monday, the Trinidad and Tobago Energy Conference will open, bringing with it a unique gathering: a panel with Dev Sanyal, bp’s Vice-President for Gas & Low Carbon, Edward Daniels, Shell’s Vice-President for Strategy and Portfolio and John Murton, the UK Government’s COP26 Envoy.
This is important as we will hear from two of the world’s largest energy companies, with considerable presence in T&T, about how they see the shift towards low carbon economies and the impact that will have on the energy sector.
With our economic model essentially built with the country’s hydrocarbon resources at its heart, we must now make some critical decisions about our future–if we get it wrong, we will be left with the management of decline; get it right, and we can reinvent ourselves as a regional reference to renewable, as well as non-renewable energy, strengthening the economy and generating the jobs needed for the future.
First of all, we need to look at what the oil and gas giants are doing themselves to see where we might need to go, too. From businesses fully focused on the exploration of oil and gas, they have been reinventing themselves as energy concerns, building a portfolio of activities that increasingly includes renewables such as solar and wind power.
This is how we must see ourselves, too, with a T&T energy sector that goes well beyond oil and gas, becoming a regional beacon for renewables such as solar, wind and tidal power, whilst remaining as the regional centre of knowledge and expertise for fossil fuels we already are.
We must also be a reference for energy efficiency, as the low-carbon future is focused on two fronts: developing renewable sources of energy and becoming increasingly more efficient in how we use what we generate.
Up to now, we failed miserably on both fronts.
Decades of easy access to cheap fuel means we grew complacent and wasteful, with most citizens, businesses and government caring little or nothing about the energy efficiency of our buildings, our cars and our daily lives. And the same low prices made us uninterested in renewable sources of energy despite their potential here given where we are.
Other major hydrocarbon producers have made the same mistakes, but they have been a lot more focused on turning things around. Just look at Saudi Arabia: despite the fact it still sits on top of one of the world’s largest oil reserves, the country is spending billions of dollars to develop its renewables sector to make it more efficient, and also to develop the skills and know-how needed if it is to remain an important energy provider in the low-carbon world.
Sadly, our historically high wasteful profligacy means our government does not have the deep pockets Saudi Arabia has to invest so heavily in new initiatives–the kingdom is prepared to spend over US$ 100 billion to ensure the shift from fossil fuels to alternative sources, such as solar and wind power, takes place.
But act we must, and this will have a direct impact on job creation and the need for the country to give its workforce the skills required.
It is critical that the energy sector’s representatives, the Government and the labour movement actively work together to ensure that we have the right conditions to develop and attract renewable energy businesses to T&T, making the country the regional hub for the sector.
For this to work, we must also include the right incentives as well as the right industrial relations climate to allow both startups and established businesses to develop their presence without being hamstrung by our archaic labour laws.
As both the laws and the labour culture in T&T stand, we provide no incentive (but plenty of risks) for new and innovative businesses to choose us as their base. This is particularly relevant because many of these businesses can choose to be based elsewhere in the Caribbean.
It’s true that we hold the advantage of already having a mature and well-established energy sector, but other Caribbean islands and Central American countries also have the natural conditions to also succeed with solar, wind and tidal energy production. This means T&T needs to be less complacent, more attractive and work harder if it wants to benefit from the jobs and economic growth the sector may provide.
This also means we need to work, and quickly, on mapping the skills required to succeed in the low carbon economy and develop a plan to both upskill those already in the labour market and ensure our education system meets the needs of the next generation of workers.
This is a requirement that, in fact, goes well beyond the energy sector’s current and future needs. It applies to the whole country’s economic future.
As we are beginning to see around the world, countries are likely to experience a rapid economic expansion as they emerge from the pandemic. But this recovery will not be like previous ones, as the pandemic helped accelerate even further the shift towards the digital economy, at the expense of the physical one.
As far as the workforce is concerned, this will mean an even higher need for those with, for instance, IT skills whilst demand for non-skilled or manual labour is likely to continue its downward trend.
If we do nothing, we will end up with the worst of both worlds: growing unemployment amongst the low-skilled workforce whilst seeing the need to import skilled labour from abroad.
Like the oil and gas underground, we have plenty of sun and wind around us. But we need to work a lot harder, quicker and smarter to make sure we can have the jobs and wealth creation that will come from the low carbon, digital world we are facing.
Doing nothing cannot be an option.