A ro­bust and en­abling en­vi­ron­ment is need­ed for leg­isla­tive and fi­nan­cial frame­works for green in­vest­ment to work co­he­sive­ly.

That’s the call from cli­mate change ex­pert Kis­han Ku­mars­ingh as he was re­spond­ing to the man­i­festo put out by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) re­gard­ing leg­isla­tive and fi­nan­cial frame­works for green in­vest­ment.

How­ev­er, en­er­gy ex­pert Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan de­scribed the man­i­festo of falling short, with re­spect to the green en­er­gy sec­tor.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian Ku­mars­ingh said to pro­mote an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment, this must be tak­en from a pol­i­cy, leg­isla­tive, in­sti­tu­tion­al and ad­min­is­tra­tive per­spec­tive, warn­ing that if this was not done then the fi­nan­cial as­pect would not be able to play a part in this plan.

“You wouldn’t be able to op­ti­mise the fi­nance that you can ac­cess, as these would be the in­sti­tu­tion­al pol­i­cy and the leg­isla­tive bar­ri­er. So, you first need to dis­man­tle those bar­ri­ers, iden­ti­fy them and build a ro­bust en­abling en­vi­ron­ment. In­crease your as­sim­ila­tive and ab­sorp­tive ca­pac­i­ty for fi­nance for cli­mate fi­nance to en­able ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive cli­mate ac­tion,” he ex­plained.

He stressed it is al­so crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant to in­clude the avail­abil­i­ty of cli­mate fi­nance which is se­vere­ly chal­lenged.

“We have to look at oth­er ways of de­vel­op­ing and lever­ag­ing in­no­v­a­tive sources of fi­nance and green bonds is one of those for ex­am­ple, or a car­bon pric­ing mech­a­nism which the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment has start­ed. Cli­mate change is per­haps the sin­gle most po­tent threat that has ever been faced by mankind.

“The main cause of it, of course, is green­house gas­es pri­mar­i­ly car­bon diox­ide. The val­ue of putting a price on car­bon emis­sions is the lever­age fi­nance to en­able. Cli­mate ac­tion be­comes al­so crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant,” Ku­mars­ingh out­lined.

On the re­new­able en­er­gy front that was high­light­ed in the man­i­festo, the cli­mate change ex­pert not­ed that ca­pac­i­ty is im­por­tant in terms of de­car­bon­is­ing the in­dus­try.

He said the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­itime or­gan­i­sa­tion, took a de­ci­sion last Fri­day, where ships would now be us­ing al­ter­na­tive fu­els or less car­bon-in­ten­sive fu­els to de­car­bonise the ship­ping in­dus­try.

“It is al­so im­por­tant for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my so that green hy­dro­gen re­new­able en­er­gy can be used to con­tin­ue the com­pet­i­tive­ness, in­creas­ing ex­ports with­out com­pro­mis­ing,” he added.

On whether more skilled work­ers were need­ed in the green sec­tor Ku­mars­ingh ad­vised that tech­nol­o­gy shifts came with reskilling, es­pe­cial­ly with elec­tric ve­hi­cles that have been more promi­nent on the mar­kets.

He stat­ed that the elec­tric ve­hi­cles would have to be ser­viced and di­ag­nosed for prob­lems, which meant the side-of-the-road me­chan­ics would al­so have to be reskilled in this area.

“The Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment has been li­ais­ing with the uni­ver­si­ty to be able to de­vel­op a craft cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, in an­tic­i­pa­tion of this shift to­wards elec­tric ve­hi­cles to equip the side of the road me­chan­ics, with some lev­el of com­pe­ten­cy that will af­ford them to main­tain their liveli­hoods,” he not­ed.

Ku­mars­ingh added that achiev­ing re­new­able en­er­gy and green in­no­va­tion must take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion all the mov­ing parts men­tioned above and work­ing to­geth­er in uni­son for it to be ex­e­cut­ed.

Man­i­festo falls short

En­er­gy ex­pert Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan said whilst the PNM’s man­i­festo speaks to re­new­able en­er­gy, hy­dro­gen de­vel­op­ment and mar­itime trans­for­ma­tion, it how­ev­er, fell short of pre­sent­ing a co­her­ent and im­ple­mentable strat­e­gy to ad­dress sev­er­al press­ing chal­lenges in the tra­di­tion­al en­er­gy sec­tor—chal­lenges that are crit­i­cal to the na­tion’s eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty and for­eign ex­change earn­ings.

While not­ing that the PNM’s em­pha­sis on cre­at­ing a re­new­able en­er­gy in­dus­try with ex­port ca­pac­i­ty is a promis­ing and pro­gres­sive step, Seep­er­sad-Bachan said this is not the first time such am­bi­tions have been ex­pressed.

“In 2010, sim­i­lar ini­tia­tives were un­der­tak­en, in­clud­ing the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of en­er­gy ser­vice pro­fes­sion­als and com­pa­nies (ES­COs), and the in­tro­duc­tion of tax in­cen­tives for en­er­gy au­dits, ef­fi­cien­cy up­grades, and re­new­able tech­nol­o­gy ac­qui­si­tions.

“Yet, due to low elec­tric­i­ty prices, lo­cal de­mand failed to ma­te­ri­alise, forc­ing many trained in­di­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies to seek op­por­tu­ni­ties else­where in the Caribbean,” she said.

While the man­i­festo al­ludes to net me­ter­ing and dis­trib­uted gen­er­a­tion, Seep­er­sad-Bachan not­ed that it did not clar­i­fy whether the ear­li­er tax in­cen­tives un­der the Home En­er­gy Self Suf­fi­cient (HESS) Pro­gramme were still in place or if new mea­sures would be in­tro­duced to make re­new­able en­er­gy adop­tion more eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able.

“HESS al­lowed home­own­ers to pow­er their homes with re­new­able en­er­gy and to feed the grid with the ex­cess re­ceiv­ing a cred­it on their month­ly billing based on a feed-in tar­iff. A more ro­bust pol­i­cy frame­work is re­quired to catal­yse in­dus­tri­al, com­mer­cial, and res­i­den­tial up­take of re­new­able tech­nolo­gies and over­come ex­ist­ing im­ped­i­ments and hur­dles,” she said.

On the hy­dro­gen econ­o­my which was al­so out­lined in the man­i­festo the en­er­gy ex­pert said T&T’s com­mit­ment to es­tab­lish­ing a green hy­dro­gen econ­o­my was re­it­er­at­ed in the man­i­festo, but with­out ac­knowl­edg­ing the de­lays and ob­sta­cles that have hin­dered progress to date.

For this am­bi­tion to be re­alised, she sug­gest­ed that the gov­ern­ment that comes in­to of­fice must con­duct a thor­ough as­sess­ment of the in­fra­struc­tur­al, reg­u­la­to­ry, and fi­nan­cial bot­tle­necks im­ped­ing the sec­tor.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said on­ly then could a re­al­is­tic, in­vestor-at­trac­tive frame­work be con­struct­ed to at­tract in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners with the req­ui­site ex­per­tise and cap­i­tal.

As it per­tains to mar­itime mod­erni­sa­tion and the pro­pos­al to po­si­tion T&T as a re­gion­al hub for green mar­itime lo­gis­tics, in­clud­ing port mod­erni­sa­tion, LNG/methanol bunker­ing, and ship­build­ing ser­vices, she laud­ed this as for­ward-think­ing.

“It aligns with glob­al trends to­wards de­car­bonised ship­ping and of­fers an av­enue to en­hance the com­pet­i­tive­ness of the coun­try’s mar­itime sec­tor.

“If ef­fec­tive­ly im­ple­ment­ed, this ini­tia­tive could se­cure T&T a strate­gic role in re­gion­al ship­ping and en­er­gy lo­gis­tics in an in­creas­ing­ly cli­mate-con­scious world.” she de­tailed.

Box

With­in the PNM’s man­i­festo which was launched last Wednes­day, the po­lit­i­cal par­ty out­lined that it would con­tin­ue to ac­cel­er­ate T&T’s tran­si­tion to a low-car­bon fu­ture by scal­ing in­vest­ment in re­new­able en­er­gy, pro­mot­ing in­no­va­tion, and co­or­di­nat­ing na­tion­al de­car­bon­i­sa­tion ef­forts.

“This ac­tiv­i­ty will be done with par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on the con­tin­ued strength­en­ing of ca­pa­bil­i­ties across the NGC Group of Com­pa­nies, with NGC Green em­pow­ered as the na­tion­al leader of sus­tain­able en­er­gy trans­for­ma­tion. Through strate­gic co­or­di­na­tion, leg­is­la­tion, and pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships, we will en­sure the suc­cess­ful de­liv­ery of large-scale clean en­er­gy projects, ex­pand op­por­tu­ni­ties for green tech­nol­o­gy, and bol­ster T&T is a re­gion­al hub for green in­no­va­tion and en­er­gy lead­er­ship,” the man­i­festo said.

On the leg­isla­tive and fi­nan­cial frame­works for green in­vest­ment, the par­ty pro­posed to in­tro­duce ro­bust leg­isla­tive and fi­nan­cial mech­a­nisms, in­clud­ing to catal­yse pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment in re­new­able en­er­gy and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy projects.

Al­so, to es­tab­lish a stream­lined per­mit­ting and ap­proval process to ac­cel­er­ate clean en­er­gy de­ploy­ment and un­lock new op­por­tu­ni­ties for do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors.

An­oth­er point iden­ti­fied was the hy­dro­gen econ­o­my ac­cel­er­a­tion, which it said would strength­en T&T’s po­si­tion as a re­gion­al hub for hy­dro­gen pro­duc­tion and ex­ports, ad­vanc­ing ex­ist­ing green hy­dro­gen ini­tia­tives, lever­ag­ing in­vest­ments in green hy­dro­gen tech­nol­o­gy, sup­port­ing in­no­va­tion in hy­dro­gen stor­age and trans­port in­fra­struc­ture, and im­ple­ment a clear hy­dro­gen reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work and fis­cal in­cen­tives to at­tract glob­al in­vestors and tech­nol­o­gy lead­ers.