The In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Agency (IEA) last week re­leased its re­port, ti­tled Net Ze­ro by 2050—A Roadmap for the Glob­al En­er­gy Sec­tor.

It is a for­ward-look­ing re­port on how the or­gan­i­sa­tion sees the world get­ting to its stat­ed goal of net ze­ro-emis­sion by the mid­dle of the cen­tu­ry, as has been com­mit­ted to by most coun­tries, in­clud­ing T&T, in the Paris Ac­cord.

While the IEA ac­knowl­edged that there were many path­ways to net ze­ro, and so far coun­tries have en­gaged in more rhetoric than ac­tion, it charts a way for­ward that its au­thors feel is the best course for the world to move to a sus­tain­able en­er­gy fu­ture.

Per­haps the most im­por­tant find­ing in terms of the medi­um- to long-term im­pact on the T&T econ­o­my, is the sug­ges­tion that there ought not to be any com­mit­ments from coun­tries and com­pa­nies to new oil and gas—yes gas as well—projects, oth­er than those al­ready sanc­tioned in 2021.

The re­port read: “Be­yond projects al­ready com­mit­ted as of 2021, there are no new oil and gas fields ap­proved for de­vel­op­ment in our path­way, and no new coal mines or mine ex­ten­sions are re­quired. The un­wa­ver­ing pol­i­cy fo­cus on cli­mate change in the net-ze­ro path­way re­sults in a sharp de­cline in fos­sil fu­el de­mand, mean­ing that the fo­cus for oil and gas pro­duc­ers switch­es en­tire­ly to out­put—and emis­sions re­duc­tions—from the op­er­a­tion of ex­ist­ing as­sets.

Un­abat­ed coal de­mand de­clines by 90% to just 1.0% of to­tal en­er­gy use in 2050. Gas de­mand de­clines by 55% to 1,750 bil­lion cu­bic me­tres and oil de­clines by 75% to 24 mil­lion bar­rels per day (mb/d), from around 90 mb/d in 2020.”

If this sce­nario is not fright­en­ing to the T&T Gov­ern­ment and or­di­nary cit­i­zens, then we are liv­ing in bliss­ful ig­no­rance.

As a coun­try, we need to in­sist that our Gov­ern­ment de­vel­ops and ex­e­cutes an al­ter­na­tive de­vel­op­ment agen­da that takes in­to ac­count the re­al­i­ty that the writ­ing is on the wall for fos­sil fu­els and that we have to build an econ­o­my that is sus­tain­able and can be pros­per­ous, even if we do not get a cent from oil and gas.

These are chal­leng­ing things to con­sid­er and much more dif­fi­cult than the usu­al pletho­ra of per­son­al at­tacks when views are at vari­ance with cer­tain nar­ra­tives. It ac­tu­al­ly re­quires hard work and lead­er­ship.

Al­ready, nat­ur­al gas prices are sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er than when T&T en­tered the LNG busi­ness a mere 22 years ago. The sim­ple rea­son for this is sup­ply and de­mand.

While there has been grow­ing de­mand for nat­ur­al gas, the pace at which gas has been dis­cov­ered and brought to mar­ket glob­al­ly has low­ered the av­er­age prices sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

Think of how T&T was dur­ing the ear­ly 2000s when glob­al LNG prices were high. We had mas­sive con­struc­tion hap­pen­ing, the wa­ter­front projects and Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza were be­ing built, One Wood­brook Place, in­ter­changes, NA­PA/SAPA be­ing built, GATE ful­ly fund­ed, promis­es of new hos­pi­tals to be built, forex was not an is­sue; in fact, there was sig­nif­i­cant growth in of­fi­cial re­serves and mon­ey be­ing placed in the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund.

The econ­o­my was over-heat­ing and when we look back and com­pare it to to­day, T&T was like the land of milk and hon­ey.

A lot of that wealth was gen­er­at­ed by mon­ey from the en­er­gy sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly LNG ex­port and strong crude prices. The growth of LNG out of Aus­tralia, Shale gas in the US, huge gas dis­cov­er­ies in Africa and even the growth of en­er­gy de­mand in Chi­na and In­dia can­not ac­com­mo­date the in­crease in pro­duc­tion.

Con­sid­er what will hap­pen to prices when de­mand falls sig­nif­i­cant­ly and what you must see is the high-cost pro­duc­ers will be run out of the mar­ket first and those that stay will have to con­tend with much small­er mar­gins and re­turns. T&T is not a low-cost pro­duc­er of nat­ur­al gas.

The re­port sug­gests that in the net-ze­ro path­way, glob­al en­er­gy de­mand in 2050 is around 8.0% small­er than to­day, but it serves an econ­o­my more than twice as big and a pop­u­la­tion with two bil­lion more peo­ple.

The IEA re­port posit­ed that there will be more ef­fi­cient use of en­er­gy, re­source ef­fi­cien­cy and be­hav­iour­al changes com­bined to off­set in­creas­es in de­mand for en­er­gy ser­vices as the world econ­o­my grows and ac­cess to en­er­gy is ex­tend­ed to all.

In­stead of fos­sil fu­els, the re­port not­ed, the en­er­gy sec­tor is based large­ly on re­new­able en­er­gy. Two thirds of the to­tal en­er­gy sup­ply in 2050 is from wind, so­lar, bioen­er­gy, ge­ot­her­mal and hy­dro en­er­gy.

So­lar be­comes the largest source, ac­count­ing for one fifth of en­er­gy sup­plies. So­lar PV ca­pac­i­ty in­creas­es 20 fold be­tween now and 2050, and wind pow­er 11 fold.

The IEA not­ed that net-ze­ro means a huge de­cline in the use of fos­sil fu­els. They fall from al­most four fifths of the to­tal en­er­gy sup­ply to­day to slight­ly over one fifth by 2050.

Fos­sil fu­els that re­main in 2050 are used in goods where the car­bon is em­bod­ied in the prod­uct, such as plas­tics.

Elec­tric­i­ty ac­counts for al­most 50% of to­tal en­er­gy con­sump­tion in 2050. It plays a key role across all sec­tors—from trans­port and build­ings to in­dus­try—and is es­sen­tial to pro­duce low-emis­sion fu­els such as hy­dro­gen. To achieve this, to­tal elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion in­creas­es over two and a half times be­tween to­day and 2050.

These are not just aca­d­e­m­ic find­ings but sce­nar­ios and de­ci­sions that are be­ing played out to­day.

Al­ready, BP PLC, the par­ent com­pa­ny of bpTT, has said that it in­tends to sell off some of its fos­sil fu­el as­sets and to in­vest in be­com­ing an in­te­grat­ed en­er­gy com­pa­ny led by re­new­ables.

While there has been no state­ment on its T&T as­set, it is not in­con­ceiv­able that the com­pa­ny could ex­it this coun­try and the dis­lo­ca­tion it will cause will not be too pret­ty.

For years, bpTT has had lim­it­ed ex­plo­ration go­ing, just enough to main­tain its pro­duc­tion. With the mas­sive cuts in BP PLC’s in­ter­na­tion­al ex­plo­ration bud­get, it is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine how this will not neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the com­pa­ny here, in­clud­ing its pro­duc­tion of hy­dro­car­bons.

Will BP, for ex­am­ple, be in­ter­est­ed in in­vest­ing in small­er fields, as we have in T&T, when its po­si­tion is on­ly high-val­ue fos­sil fu­el tar­gets and main­ly re­new­ables?

When we spend time as a coun­try ar­gu­ing about what event led to the spike of the COVID-19 virus, it is a good dis­trac­tion from be­ing forced to think and ar­tic­u­late a strat­e­gy to emerge from the lock­downs.

It is a smoke-screen, an at­tempt al­most to keep the so­ci­ety stoned so we hide the fact that a year lat­er, we are al­most im­pris­oned in a coun­try whose of­fi­cial bor­ders re­main closed while its un­of­fi­cial bor­ders are avail­able for who­ev­er can get here on the first pirogue.

The world’s largest oil and gas com­pa­ny, Exxon Mo­bil, is hav­ing a ma­jor board fight as funds that in­vest in the com­pa­ny are de­mand­ing changes at the board lev­el to re­flect a new fo­cus on cli­mate change and tran­si­tion to re­new­ables.

Cal­i­for­nia has just agreed with the US gov­ern­ment to have ma­jor wind farms off­shore. As the CEO of BP said, we can­not fight grav­i­ty.

There­fore, hold­ing on with our fin­ger­nails to oil and gas prices will get us nowhere. We need to sim­ply get on with it. Get on with the work of eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion, get on with the work of fight­ing the pan­dem­ic, get on with the work of find­ing vac­cines.

Be­cause at the end of the day, no one will care who built the hos­pi­tals if qual­i­ty health­care is not avail­able.

No one will care if it means the stu­dents who are set to write SEA live in a coun­try that nev­er heed­ed the warn­ing signs and found it­self ill-pre­pared when change comes knock­ing.

Cur­tis Williams is con­flict­ed why who built a hos­pi­tal is so im­por­tant in a time of na­tion­al cri­sis with hun­dreds dead and an econ­o­my breached?