PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior mul­ti­me­dia re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted that Trinidad and To­ba­go will face a dilem­ma dur­ing the en­er­gy tran­si­tion.

While ad­dress­ing the launch of the De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean's (CAF) Re­port on the Econ­o­my and De­vel­op­ment (RED) 2024, at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um, Min­is­ter Im­bert said the tran­si­tion re­quired a dif­fi­cult bal­anc­ing act.

"The fly in the oint­ment is the dilem­ma that con­fronts oil-and-gas-based economies that earn most of their rev­enue from fos­sil fu­els. It is easy for spokesper­sons from ad­vanced di­ver­si­fied economies to in­sist on the elim­i­na­tion of fos­sil fu­els, and the ex­treme weath­er events af­fect­ing many coun­tries in re­cent years make this an ob­vi­ous im­per­a­tive, but for coun­tries that have few al­ter­na­tive sources of in­come, the fu­ture will be dif­fi­cult. Trinidad and To­ba­go is an en­er­gy-based econ­o­my, and there­fore, we must be care­ful and pru­dent, and our en­er­gy tran­si­tion must there­fore thus be mea­sured and sen­si­ble."

He con­tin­ued, "We cer­tain­ly can­not aban­don the pro­duc­tion of oil and gas, but what we can do is to re­duce our car­bon foot­print, small as it is, by max­imis­ing the use of re­new­able en­er­gy for elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion, and the use of elec­tric ve­hi­cles, and pro­mot­ing green en­er­gy sources, such a hy­dro­gen, as we care­ful­ly map out and plan our en­er­gy tran­si­tion."

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter made ref­er­ence to promis­es made dur­ing COP 28 dur­ing his speech, but not­ed that T&T's hy­dro­car­bon in­dus­try would place the coun­try high up the list in term of emis­sions per capi­ta. But ul­ti­mate­ly, he said, T&T's cur­rent emis­sions were a speck com­pared to oth­er na­tions that al­so have their part to play in ad­dress­ing the con­cerns. He ex­plained that giv­en the fact that T&T's econ­o­my has large­ly hinged on the oil and gas in­dus­try, there should be con­sid­er­a­tion giv­en to this fact.

"I wish to ap­peal to all stake­hold­ers present here to con­tin­ue these much-need­ed con­ver­sa­tions be­yond to­day’s launch as the re­gion seeks to tran­si­tion its en­er­gy needs with­out com­pro­mis­ing the abil­i­ty of fu­ture gen­er­a­tion to meet their own needs. The time for in­cre­men­tal change is be­hind us. What we now re­quire is a com­mit­ment to trans­for­ma­tion. Our en­er­gy tran­si­tion is not sim­ply about re­duc­ing the lev­el of emis­sions; it is about build­ing an in­clu­sive, re­silient and for­ward-look­ing econ­o­my that se­cures a pros­per­ous fu­ture for the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean re­gion."

Im­bert hailed CAF's work in the re­gion, stat­ing its ini­tia­tives had made it his favourite bank.

CAF's re­gion­al man­ag­er for the Caribbean, Dr. Sta­cy Richards-Kennedy said the re­port ex­am­ined "the triple chal­lenge that our re­gion faces: re­duc­ing green­house gas emis­sions, re­duc­ing in­equal­i­ty and pover­ty, and clos­ing the in­come gap with the de­vel­oped world."

She said, "Achiev­ing this re­quires re­vers­ing slug­gish growth trends. It will de­mand po­lit­i­cal sup­port, ro­bust in­fra­struc­ture, and in­no­v­a­tive fi­nanc­ing – where in­sti­tu­tions like CAF play a cru­cial role."

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young al­so spoke dur­ing the launch, dis­cussing as­pects of T&T's re­new­able en­er­gy plans, in­clud­ing the on­go­ing con­struc­tion of a so­lar en­er­gy grid as well as the coun­try's in­vest­ment in­to green hy­dro­gen.