Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

We need to be more mind­ful of how we use the lights and the air-con­di­tion in Gov­ern­ment of­fices if we are se­ri­ous about ad­dress­ing the en­er­gy con­cerns of this coun­try.

So said Bev­er­ly Khan, chair­per­son of the Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed com­mit­tee of En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy and En­er­gy Con­ser­va­tion as she of­fi­cial­ly hand­ed over the com­mit­tee’s re­port to Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte on Tues­day.

The re­port was pro­duced fol­low­ing three months of work by a mul­ti-sec­toral com­mit­tee and is ex­pect­ed to be a def­i­nite en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy and en­er­gy con­ser­va­tion road map for the coun­try.

Trinidad and To­ba­go has a high per capi­ta con­sump­tion of elec­tric­i­ty and is ranked among the most en­er­gy-in­ten­sive coun­tries in the world.

Khan said the Gov­ern­ment needs to lead the way to change this.

“Key to the ef­fort go­ing for­ward is the lead­er­ship role of the Gov­ern­ment. Gov­ern­ment must lead the way and the re­port iden­ti­fies some very spe­cif­ic ac­tions to be tak­en in re­spect of, in the first in­stance Gov­ern­ment build­ings and the fact that we need to have en­er­gy-sav­ing prac­tices in terms of the light­ing of the build­ings and air con­di­tion sys­tems that we utilise,” Khan said.

“Our ini­tial analy­sis in this re­port shows quite clear­ly that there are tremen­dous ben­e­fits. It is the right thing to do at this time in Trinidad and To­ba­go. We have iden­ti­fied the po­ten­tial for sig­nif­i­cant en­er­gy sav­ings and of course an in­crease in rev­enue to the State, the re­duc­tion in Car­bon emis­sions, GHG (Green­house Gas) emis­sions and of course there is the op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate a new in­dus­try in the coun­try and to cre­ate em­ploy­ment,” she said.

Af­ter Le Hunte re­views the re­port it will be sub­mit­ted to Cab­i­net for de­lib­er­a­tion.

Le Hunte said the re­port will not end up be­ing stuck on a shelf like many oth­er re­ports pro­duced in this coun­try.

“I as­sure you and I as­sure the na­tion that this par­tic­u­lar plan is not a plan that is go­ing to end up on the shelf as a lot of oth­er plans. Af­ter this plan is pre­sent­ed very quick­ly af­ter my re­view I am hop­ing to take it to Cab­i­net to get it for­mal­ly ap­proved and then it will be im­ple­ment­ed,” he said.

Adri­an Leonce, the re­cent­ly ap­point­ed Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary at the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, has been man­dat­ed to lead the charge go­ing for­ward at it re­lates to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the En­er­gy Con­ser­va­tion and En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy Ac­tion plan 2020 to 2024.