Se­cur­ing T&T’s en­er­gy tran­si­tion across all sec­tors re­quires crit­i­cal fac­tors in­clud­ing fund­ing, cre­at­ing an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment and prop­er in­fra­struc­ture like a bunker­ing hub.

These are all key to the mar­itime sec­tor es­pe­cial­ly, said Lisa-Marie Ram­lal, Pro­man’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty man­ag­er in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian.

She was among key stake­hold­ers who pre­sent­ed at the Caribbean Sus­tain­able En­er­gy Con­fer­ence themed, “From Ideas to Ac­tion” which sig­ni­fied the tran­si­tion from the­o­ret­i­cal con­cepts and in­no­v­a­tive ideas to prac­ti­cal and fea­si­ble ac­tions to ad­dress the en­er­gy chal­lenges fac­ing the re­gion.

Ac­cord­ing to the cham­ber’s web­site, the theme fur­ther em­pha­sised the need for col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts and part­ner­ships be­tween in­dus­try ex­perts, pol­i­cy­mak­ers, acad­e­mia, and stake­hold­ers to im­ple­ment sus­tain­able so­lu­tions and achieve tan­gi­ble out­comes in the field of re­new­able en­er­gy and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy.

Ac­cord­ing to the cham­ber, “From Ideas to Ac­tion” al­so high­light­ed the im­por­tance of con­vert­ing ideas in­to prac­ti­cal and ac­tion­able plans, lever­ag­ing the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy and in­no­va­tion, and in­cor­po­rat­ing best prac­tices and lessons learned from suc­cess­ful projects world­wide.

“The Caribbean re­gion has been fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant en­er­gy chal­lenges, in­clud­ing high de­pen­dence on fos­sil fu­els, en­er­gy in­se­cu­ri­ty and the neg­a­tive im­pact of cli­mate change.

“The theme seeks to in­spire and mo­ti­vate par­tic­i­pants to col­lab­o­rate and take con­crete steps to­wards achiev­ing a more sus­tain­able, se­cure, and re­silient en­er­gy fu­ture in the Caribbean.

“By bridg­ing the gap be­tween ideas and ac­tion, the con­fer­ence aims to pro­mote knowl­edge shar­ing, ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, and net­work­ing among ex­perts, prac­ti­tion­ers, and stake­hold­ers, ul­ti­mate­ly lead­ing to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of ef­fec­tive and sus­tain­able so­lu­tions for the re­gion’s en­er­gy chal­lenges,” the cham­ber fur­ther ex­plained.

Ac­cord­ing to Ram­lal, who is based at Pro­man’s head­quar­ters in Switzer­land, while there have been strides, the mar­itime sec­tor still faces some ob­sta­cles in achiev­ing its quest for clean­er en­er­gy.

“Many ves­sel own­ers are tasked with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of em­ploy­ing high-cost ini­tia­tives such as tech­nol­o­gy to out­fit their ships.

“These are quite cap­i­tal in­ten­sive and there­fore, they need to have a va­ri­ety of tech­nol­o­gy and al­ter­nate fu­els they can se­lect from. So one of the chal­lenges in that par­tic­u­lar sec­tor would be the abil­i­ty to utilise these tech­nolo­gies; how­ev­er, they are quite ex­pen­sive.

“Car­bon cap­ture, for in­stance, is still very cost­ly and un­der eval­u­a­tion. These are good things but to bring them to a more fea­si­ble place you need in­cen­tives and pol­i­cy mech­a­nisms for these ship and ves­sel own­ers to make the switch,” she said.

So how does Pro­man fit in­to this?

Ram­lal not­ed the com­pa­ny has over 35 years of ex­pe­ri­ence op­er­at­ing in the lo­cal en­er­gy sec­tor, adding that glob­al­ly the com­pa­ny man­u­fac­tures around six mil­lion met­ric tonnes of methanol per year, the ma­jor­i­ty of which is pro­duced in Trinidad.

More im­por­tant­ly, she said, is a bunker­ing hub.

“The op­por­tu­ni­ty for Trinidad is that we (Pro­man) al­ready have knowl­edge, ex­per­tise, and tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise in the area of methanol pro­duc­tion. We have a lot of safe op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures al­ready es­tab­lished, so the op­por­tu­ni­ty here for Trinidad is to de­vel­op a bunker­ing hub which utilis­es var­i­ous fu­els, one of them be­ing methanol,” Ram­lal ex­plained.

Last No­vem­ber, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said that T&T will ex­plore a bunker­ing in­dus­try, based on the use of methanol as a ma­rine fu­el.

Speak­ing at the launch of Pro­man’s methanol-fu­elled tanker, Ste­na Pro Pa­tria, the Prime Min­is­ter said T&T would seek to take ad­van­tage of its ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tion, of be­ing close to the Pana­ma Canal by of­fer­ing fu­el ser­vices for ships.

Re­it­er­at­ing the im­por­tance of such a fa­cil­i­ty, Ram­lal said it is al­so an im­por­tant job cre­ator for the sec­tor.

“Tug boats, sur­vey­ors, the port au­thor­i­ty, lo­gis­tics, all of these ar­eas are ben­e­fit­ing now in­di­rect­ly and di­rect­ly from the busi­ness that has been gen­er­at­ed from the bunker­ing hub,” she out­lined, adding that this coun­try’s ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tion is al­so ide­al be­ing in a shel­tered coast­line with trade routes close to the Pana­ma Canal.

Say­ing that T&T al­ready had 100 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in oil and nat­ur­al gas, Ram­lal said the bunker­ing hub could play a key role in the coun­try’s en­er­gy tran­si­tion.

How­ev­er, sup­port from the Gov­ern­ment, as well as nec­es­sary poli­cies, are need­ed to bring this to fruition.

“We al­so need in­cen­tives to en­sure the li­cences are avail­able to al­low for the bunker­ing of ship to ship or any oth­er mech­a­nisms or pro­ce­dures to be in place...in­fra­struc­ture, any mod­i­fi­ca­tion or mi­nor mod­i­fi­ca­tion, low in­vest­ment we an­tic­i­pate be­cause the in­fra­struc­ture is al­ready de­vel­oped around that but these are some of the as­pects to look in­to to make it fea­si­ble,” Ram­lal de­tailed.

On whether T&T still has a long way to go to tru­ly meet its sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals as far as en­er­gy tran­si­tion is con­cerned, Ram­lal ref­er­enced the largest so­lar park in the Caribbean which is about to be built at Brechin Cas­tle.

“That is ac­tu­al­ly a piv­otal point for Trinidad. I think to re­di­vert some of the nat­ur­al gas that is be­ing di­rect­ed to the elec­tric­i­ty sec­tor now for the down­stream busi­ness be­cause ob­vi­ous­ly, the feed­stock for our methanol and am­mo­nia plants is nat­ur­al gas. Where we can di­rect the val­ue for Trinidad and To­ba­go through the use of re­new­ables...that to me is an idea which has turned to ac­tion,” she added.

In shar­ing in­sights in­to Pro­man’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty unit which was es­tab­lished just un­der a year ago, Ram­lal said, “The ob­jec­tives are to mon­i­tor all ac­tiv­i­ties, projects that we are ex­plor­ing, ex­ist­ing plants and new projects in terms of our im­pact on cli­mate change as well as en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact and so­cial as­pects and en­sure that we are aligned and achiev­ing the group’s goals.”

And as a woman hold­ing such an in­te­gral po­si­tion in that unit, Ram­lal dis­closed, “I nev­er felt in our com­pa­ny that we (women) were dis­ad­van­taged. I al­ways felt that Pro­man is a very di­verse place to work and now that I have shift­ed to the head­quar­ters, it is no dif­fer­ent. We have a di­verse set of em­ploy­ees com­ing from Ger­many, the Trinidad of­fice, Por­tu­gal and the US work­ing to­geth­er and my team is ac­tu­al­ly two women and one guy.”

The two-day con­fer­ence was host­ed by the T&T En­er­gy Cham­ber and was held at the Hy­att Re­gency ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.

The third day fea­tured tours of en­er­gy as­sets in T&T.

The En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T es­tab­lished this con­fer­ence back in 2017.

It was the first con­fer­ence ded­i­cat­ed to the pro­mo­tion of en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy and re­new­able en­er­gy in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The con­fer­ence has since grown in terms of its promi­nence in the en­er­gy land­scape in T&T and the wider re­gion and by the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants.

The con­fer­ence had sev­er­al it­er­a­tions of its name and is now known as the “The Caribbean Sus­tain­able En­er­gy Con­fer­ence” to en­sure that it ful­ly rep­re­sents all top­ics un­der the is­sue of en­er­gy tran­si­tion in the Caribbean.