“Daunt­ing but not in­sur­mount­able.”

This is how En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan has de­scribed the chal­lenge cur­rent­ly fac­ing this coun­try when it comes to re­bal­anc­ing our en­er­gy mix in the face of glob­al cli­mate change con­cerns.

Khan made the state­ment yes­ter­day as he de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the first day of the T&T En­er­gy Cham­ber’s 5th An­nu­al En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy and Re­new­ables Con­fer­ence 2021.

“We will seek op­por­tu­ni­ties to work with our stake­hold­ers in our do­mes­tic en­er­gy sec­tor to de­vel­op and im­ple­ment so­lu­tions aimed at re­duc­ing our car­bon foot­print as part of our con­tri­bu­tion to the re­duc­tion of glob­al warm­ing and in the re­bal­anc­ing of the coun­try’s en­er­gy mix.

“How­ev­er, hav­ing said that, we can­not throw the ba­by out with the bath­wa­ter. As a gas-based econ­o­my, we de­pend on the mon­eti­sa­tion of nat­ur­al gas to pro­duce our ma­jor ex­ports and for­eign ex­change earn­ings from LNG and Petro­chem­i­cals. For decades, 100 per cent of our elec­tric­i­ty has been gen­er­at­ed from nat­ur­al gas, which con­tin­ues to grow in promi­nence as a tran­si­tion fu­el, by virtue of it be­ing the clean­est of fos­sil fu­els. In this re­gard, Trinidad and To­ba­go has been a leader in the tran­si­tion, hav­ing trans­formed the do­mes­tic en­er­gy sec­tor from be­ing oil-based to gas-based,” Khan stat­ed.

Khan not­ed that CARI­COM as a whole has set a tar­get of re­new­able en­er­gy ca­pac­i­ty of 28 per cent by 2022 and 47 per cent by 2027.

He said that coun­tries in the re­gion have been util­is­ing their sig­nif­i­cant re­new­able en­er­gy re­sources, in­clud­ing bio­mass, ge­ot­her­mal, hy­dropow­er, so­lar, waste-to-en­er­gy, and wind in wean­ing their economies from fos­sils.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go cur­rent­ly lies at the me­di­an in re­la­tion to the progress made by coun­tries in tran­si­tion­ing their en­er­gy sys­tems. As a Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing State we are acute­ly aware of the ef­fects of cli­mate change on the en­vi­ron­ment and as an oil and gas ex­porter we are aware of our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to mit­i­gat­ing the ef­fects of glob­al warm­ing. It is with this recog­ni­tion that the Gov­ern­ment in its 2030 vi­sion has placed the en­vi­ron­ment at the fore­front of so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and es­tab­lished short, medi­um- and long-term goals aimed at achiev­ing a bal­ance be­tween the en­vi­ron­ment and so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment,” Khan stat­ed.

Khan said the key to achiev­ing our goals is first to un­der­stand the enor­mi­ty of the un­der­tak­ing so that the ap­pro­pri­ate so­lu­tions can be de­vised.

He said there­fore in or­der to en­sure the ac­cu­ra­cy of the da­ta on emis­sions the gov­ern­ment has de­vel­oped a Mit­i­ga­tion, Re­port­ing and Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem which stream­lines da­ta pro­tec­tion with In­ter­na­tion­al Prac­tice.

“The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty is charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to val­i­date the da­ta be­fore it is in­cor­po­rat­ed in the Na­tion­al In­ven­to­ry. At this time re­port­ing by com­pa­nies on their emis­sions is vol­un­tary but steps are be­ing tak­en to make such re­port­ing manda­to­ry,” Khan said.

The Mit­i­ga­tion, Re­port­ing and Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem will pro­vide an ac­cu­rate ac­count of emis­sions gen­er­at­ed by in­dus­tries in this coun­try, Khan stat­ed.

He said the En­er­gy Min­istry in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go and Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed has been pur­su­ing a project aimed at the man­age­ment of car­bon diox­ide emis­sions.

The aim of the project is to iden­ti­fy reser­voirs with the po­ten­tial for stor­age of car­bon diox­ide and for the stim­u­la­tion of oil pro­duc­tion, he stat­ed.

“It is an her­culean task. Re­gard­less of which path­way the world fol­lows, cli­mate im­pacts will be­come more vis­i­ble and se­vere over the com­ing years, in­creas­ing the pres­sure on all el­e­ments of so­ci­ety to find so­lu­tions. It is with this recog­ni­tion that sev­er­al coun­tries have ac­cel­er­at­ed and or ex­pand­ed their plans to low­er their green­house gas emis­sions,” he stat­ed.