As Gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to meet­ing the de­mands of the Paris Agree­ment, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young says the es­ti­mat­ed cost of im­ple­men­ta­tion of the mit­i­ga­tion ac­tion is US$ $2 bil­lion, with the ma­jor cost of US$945 mil­lion in re­spect of pow­er gen­er­a­tion, US$735 mil­lion for trans­porta­tion and US$320 mil­lion in re­spect of in­dus­try.

Young added that Gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to an over­all re­duc­tion in cu­mu­la­tive emis­sions from three main emit­ting sec­tors; pow­er gen­er­a­tion, trans­port and in­dus­try, by 15 per cent by 2030.

Speak­ing at the T&T sec­tion of the So­ci­ety of Pe­tro­le­um En­gi­neers (SPETT) In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Re­sources Con­fer­ence and Ex­hi­bi­tion yes­ter­day, Young said the fi­nanc­ing of the US$2 bil­lion is to be met part­ly through do­mes­tic fund­ing and in­ter­na­tion­al cli­mate change fi­nanc­ing, in­clud­ing through the Green Cli­mate Fund.

“The fi­nanc­ing of the cli­mate change mea­sures has to be man­aged as the Gov­ern­ment has to en­sure that tran­si­tion­ing to a low car­bon econ­o­my is not at the ex­pense of the coun­try’s so­cio-eco­nom­ic and de­vel­op­men­tal ob­jec­tives,” he added.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter Gov­ern­ment ex­pects in­dus­try to play its part, not on­ly from the view of ad­dress­ing cli­mate change but in sus­tain­ing and grow­ing its busi­ness.

This, Young added, will re­quire adopt­ing green­house abate­ment mea­sures as well as in­vest­ing in green tech­nolo­gies.

“There is an in­ex­orable move­ment to a glob­al green econ­o­my and if we fail to pre­pare we are prepar­ing to fail. De­car­bon­i­sa­tion of ex­ist­ing en­er­gy sys­tems is an in­ter­me­di­ate step in the re­struc­tur­ing of the do­mes­tic en­er­gy sec­tor.

“How­ev­er, we can­not de­lay the trans­for­ma­tion as wide­spread sup­port from gov­ern­ments, com­pa­nies, and broad­er so­ci­ety for a green re­cov­ery post COVID-19 has re­sult­ed in rapid mo­men­tum build­ing for a green econ­o­my,” Young added.

At the De­cem­ber 2020 Cli­mate Am­bi­tion Sum­mit, the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion re­vealed an am­bi­tious tar­get of 55 per cent green­house gas re­duc­tions by 2030.

The Eu­ro­pean Green Deal aims to make Eu­rope ful­ly car­bon neu­tral by 2050, lay­ing out rig­or­ous pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives for its promised in­vest­ment of 100 bil­lion Eu­ros, mar­ket in­cen­tives and so­cial pro­tec­tion to make this a re­al­i­ty.

T&T is a sig­na­to­ry to the 2015 Paris Cli­mate Change Agree­ment.

“In sign­ing on to the agree­ment we have com­mit­ted to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of our Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tion as part of the glob­al ef­fort to re­duce green­house gas emis­sions and to mit­i­gate the im­pacts of cli­mate change,” the min­is­ter added.