The En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T is con­tin­u­ing to look at the projects which were se­lect­ed by its judges for pre­sen­ta­tion at the T&T En­er­gy Con­fer­ence 2025, dur­ing the in­no­va­tion and tech­nol­o­gy chal­lenge, and has high­light­ed one sub­mit­ted by an­oth­er of its mem­ber com­pa­nies, TOSL En­gi­neer­ing.

In a post on its web­site this week, the cham­ber stat­ed that this fea­tured project which was pre­sent­ed by Dave Ram­nar­ine, team lead chem­i­cal process and as­set in­tegri­ty so­lu­tions, TOSL En­gi­neer­ing Ltd, is the first im­ple­men­ta­tion of an en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient dis­trict cool­ing sys­tem in T&T, de­signed specif­i­cal­ly for small is­land de­vel­op­ing states (SIDS).

The cham­ber ex­plained the project, in align­ment with the na­tion­al cool­ing strat­e­gy for T&T, pro­vides an ef­fi­cient way to air con­di­tion a net­work of build­ings which in­volves the dis­tri­b­u­tion of chilled wa­ter from a cen­tral­ized source to mul­ti­ple build­ings via a net­work of in­su­lat­ed pipes.

It fur­ther not­ed that this project in part­ner­ship with the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment and the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP), fo­cus­es on re­duc­ing elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion and green­house gas emis­sions by util­is­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, low-glob­al warm­ing po­ten­tial (GWP) re­frig­er­ants.

“The project is sig­nif­i­cant to the en­er­gy sec­tor in T&T since it has the po­ten­tial to re­duce the de­mand for nat­ur­al gas for pow­er,” the cham­ber stat­ed.

TOSL fur­ther not­ed that by im­ple­ment­ing en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient cool­ing sys­tems in T&T, the high elec­tric­i­ty de­mands typ­i­cal­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with air con­di­tion­ing in trop­i­cal re­gions could be re­duced by up to 20 per cent.

“This di­rect­ly low­ers the de­mand for elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion, which is crit­i­cal in re­gions where en­er­gy re­sources are lim­it­ed, and such ef­fi­cien­cy sup­ports na­tion­al en­er­gy-sav­ing goals and aligns with sus­tain­abil­i­ty pri­or­i­ties,” it added.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the cham­ber ex­plained that by cen­tral­is­ing cool­ing and re­duc­ing elec­tric­i­ty us­age, the project re­duces the strain and cyclic loads on elec­tri­cal grids and sup­ports a more bal­anced and sta­ble elec­tric­i­ty dis­tri­b­u­tion.

“In T&T this will al­low gas to be al­lo­cat­ed more to oth­er in­come-gen­er­at­ing sec­tors,” it said, em­pha­sis­ing that an­oth­er pos­i­tive is the de­sign, which is com­pat­i­ble with re­new­able en­er­gy sources, pro­vid­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to in­te­grate so­lar or oth­er re­new­able en­er­gy sources.

It al­so not­ed that this cre­ates a path­way for re­duc­ing fos­sil fu­el de­pen­den­cy in cool­ing sys­tems, es­sen­tial for achiev­ing long-term cli­mate tar­gets.

“In the en­er­gy sec­tor waste heat can be used to pow­er a dis­trict cool­ing sys­tem, en­abling fur­ther sav­ings,” the cham­ber said.

It added that this in­no­va­tion would have a di­rect im­pact on the high en­er­gy con­sump­tion and en­vi­ron­men­tal ef­fect of con­ven­tion­al cool­ing sys­tems in SIDS like T&T, while al­so re­duc­ing the use of ozone-de­plet­ing re­frig­er­ants.

Tra­di­tion­al cool­ing sys­tems are en­er­gy-in­ten­sive, lead­ing to high elec­tric­i­ty costs, the cham­ber not­ed.

It al­so stat­ed that many ex­ist­ing cool­ing sys­tems re­ly on re­frig­er­ants with high glob­al warm­ing po­ten­tial (GWP), which con­tributes to cli­mate change and vi­o­lates in­ter­na­tion­al en­vi­ron­men­tal agree­ments like the Mon­tre­al Pro­to­col.

The cham­ber said the lack of in­te­grat­ed, scal­able and ef­fi­cient cool­ing tech­nolo­gies tai­lored to SIDS’ unique needs has hin­dered the adop­tion of sus­tain­able cool­ing strate­gies.

It ad­vised that tra­di­tion­al cool­ing tech­nolo­gies re­quire sig­nif­i­cant ini­tial cap­i­tal in­vest­ments, dis­cour­ag­ing wide­spread adop­tion of en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient so­lu­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly for busi­ness­es and com­mu­ni­ties with bud­get con­straints.

This dis­trict cool­ing in­no­va­tion ad­dress­es these prob­lems by:

1. Re­duc­ing en­er­gy con­sump­tion through cen­tralised, high­ly ef­fi­cient cool­ing there­by re­mov­ing eight cen­tral cool­ing units and more than 38 sin­gle split units re­placed with one chiller

2. Util­is­ing ozone-friend­ly, low-GWP re­frig­er­ants to min­imise en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact.

3. In­tro­duc­ing “cool­ing as a ser­vice” (CaaS) to elim­i­nate up­front costs and en­cour­age adop­tion

The cham­ber fur­ther ex­plained that what makes this tech­nol­o­gy even more at­trac­tive and adapt­able is its clear po­ten­tial mar­ket and sig­nif­i­cant scal­a­bil­i­ty prospects, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­gions with trop­i­cal cli­mates and high en­er­gy de­mand like SIDS.

“The cen­tralised na­ture of dis­trict cool­ing sys­tems al­lows for seam­less ex­pan­sion as de­mand grows. New build­ings and fa­cil­i­ties can be con­nect­ed to the sys­tem, lever­ag­ing the ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture,” it said.

The cham­ber al­so not­ed that low-GWP re­frig­er­ants and en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient chillers are scal­able tech­nolo­gies that could be de­ployed across mul­ti­ple sec­tors and ge­o­gra­phies with min­i­mal mod­i­fi­ca­tion.

“At TOSL’s lo­ca­tion in Ma­haraj Av­enue, they can add their neigh­bours as off-tak­ers from the dis­trict cool­ing sys­tem, al­low­ing them to ben­e­fit from the CaaS mod­el and en­er­gy sav­ing.

“Oth­er busi­ness­es lo­cal­ly with high cool­ing de­mands (eg, ho­tels, shop­ping malls, da­ta cen­tres, busi­ness dis­tricts, in­dus­tri­al es­tates and man­u­fac­tur­ing plants) are key mar­kets. These sec­tors are of­ten bur­dened by high op­er­a­tional costs due to in­ef­fi­cient cool­ing tech­nolo­gies. In­dus­tri­al users, such as those in petro­chem­i­cals and oil and gas, can ben­e­fit from cen­tralised cool­ing to re­duce en­er­gy con­sump­tion and emis­sions,” the cham­ber ex­plained.

It fur­ther not­ed that the Caribbean re­gion, in­clud­ing T&T, faces high cool­ing de­mands year-round due to its trop­i­cal cli­mate.

This in­no­va­tion di­rect­ly ad­dress­es these needs by of­fer­ing en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient cool­ing so­lu­tions tai­lored to such en­vi­ron­ments, the cham­ber said, adding, that sim­i­lar SIDS world­wide (eg, Pa­cif­ic and In­di­an Ocean re­gions) share com­pa­ra­ble chal­lenges, mak­ing this in­no­va­tion high­ly rel­e­vant be­yond the Caribbean.

The cham­ber main­tained that by re­duc­ing re­liance on fos­sil fu­els and in­creas­ing en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy, the in­no­va­tion en­hances en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty and cli­mate re­silience, ad­dress­ing the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of SIDS to cli­mate change.