Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day sug­gest­ed that a US$1 bil­lion Caribbean En­er­gy The­mat­ic Fund be es­tab­lished to deal with re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

Speak­ing at the First Caribbean En­er­gy Se­cu­ri­ty Sum­mit in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., said the T&T Gov­ern­ment's is com­mit­ted to work­ing with the Unit­ed States and oth­er Caribbean coun­tries to achieve a "clean­er, more sus­tain­able en­er­gy fu­ture" in the re­gion.

"En­er­gy is at the heart of ef­forts to build re­silience through im­proved com­pet­i­tive­ness and stronger en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty," she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said re­silience can be built by trans­form­ing the en­er­gy ma­trix in the Caribbean, which re­quires a three-pronged ap­proach:

�2 Im­prov­ing con­ser­va­tion and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy,

�2 Max­i­miz­ing the use of re­new­able en­er­gy sources

�2 Con­vert­ing to Liq­ue­fied Nat­ur­al Gas fu­elled elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion for the base load ca­pac­i­ty.

She said the cost of this so­lu­tion is not sup­port­able for coun­tries with high debt and min­i­mal fis­cal space, and it is there­fore nec­es­sary to en­gen­der co-op­er­a­tion for build­ing re­silience through en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar pro­posed a method­ol­o­gy to work with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IADB), the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB), the World Bank, the IMF and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al donors, friends of the Caribbean and the pri­vate sec­tor to pro­vide the method and means of achiev­ing en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty in a man­ner that is ef­fi­cient and sus­tain­able.

She said the T&T Gov­ern­ment has been work­ing in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the IDB over the last 18 months to de­sign a new ini­tia­tive that is home-grown in the Caribbean.

"Af­ter rig­or­ous eco­nom­ic analy­sis and tech­ni­cal fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies and a thor­ough as­sess­ment of these, we have agreed as a gov­ern­ment on the cre­ation of a Caribbean En­er­gy The­mat­ic Fund for Cari­com mem­ber states," she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar pro­posed work­ing with tra­di­tion­al donors and coun­tries with a strate­gic in­ter­est in the re­gion and the pri­vate sec­tor to pro­vide the nec­es­sary fi­nan­cial and tech­ni­cal sup­port for trans­for­ma­tion of the en­er­gy sec­tor, max­i­miz­ing pub­lic pri­vate part­ner­ships.

"We must look past short term fluc­tu­a­tions in oil prices to fo­cus on the long term strate­gic in­ter­ests of the re­gion,"she said.

In a joint state­ment is­sued at the end of yes­ter­day's sum­mit, par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries said their agreed to "com­pre­hen­sive, plan­ning-based and re­search-dri­ven ap­proach­es to en­er­gy tran­si­tion, in­clud­ing im­ple­men­ta­tion of pi­lot and demon­stra­tion projects, based on suc­cess­ful mod­els so that in­di­vid­ual clean en­er­gy projects are part of a ful­ly in­te­grat­ed, cli­mate-re­silient en­er­gy tran­si­tion plan to­ward clean sus­tain­able en­er­gy for all."

They al­so agreed to spe­cif­ic re­forms, in­clud­ing adop­tion of rec­om­men­da­tions from the 2013 Cari­com En­er­gy Pol­i­cy afor in­tro­duc­tion of new tech­nolo­gies favour­ing sus­tain­able and clean en­erg.

In ad­di­tion, where "tech­ni­cal­ly and com­mer­cial­ly fea­si­ble" the ob­jec­tive will be low­er car­bon elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion through wind, so­lar, ge­ot­her­mal pow­er, hy­dropow­er, bioen­er­gy, ocean en­er­gy, en­er­gy re­cov­ery from waste, and oth­er clean en­er­gies.