An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The Caribbean has great po­ten­tial to be­come a world pow­er in re­new­able en­er­gy, ANSA McAL group CEO An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III said yes­ter­day.

The ANSA McAL group has been fo­cused on find­ing com­mer­cial­ly vi­able re­new­able en­er­gy projects that will con­tribute to en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

Ad­dress­ing the com­pa­ny’s work­shop at the En­er­gy Con­fer­ence 2024: “Re­al­is­ing a Sus­tain­able En­er­gy Fu­ture for Trinidad & To­ba­go and the Caribbean: 2030 and Be­yond”, at the Hy­att Re­gency, Sab­ga gave in­sight in­to his dream to have cruise ship tours start­ing from the Port of Port-of-Spain head­ing north, us­ing ves­sels fu­elled by hy­dro­gen there­by pro­mot­ing green­er en­er­gy while al­so cre­at­ing greater em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“In ad­di­tion to wind and hy­dro­car­bons, these ves­sels will be pow­ered by hy­dro­gen and elec­tric­i­ty pro­duced via a Caribbean-wide con­nect­ed grid. Ful­ly base­lined by wind, so­lar, hy­dro, and ge­ot­her­mal en­er­gy from our vast and present re­new­able re­sources. The mass em­ploy­ment com­ing from all of this would pow­er­ful­ly im­pact crime and oth­er im­ped­i­ments to so­cial de­vel­op­ments, in our coun­try and across the re­gion,” the CEO re­marked.

Guyana Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali de­liv­ered an ad­dress at the con­fer­ence, but again high­light­ed that re­new­able projects re­quired ma­jor cap­i­tal.

But Sab­ga said if these plans are act­ed up­on, such a plan could at­tract in­ter­na­tion­al in­vest­ment.

“The ex­cess sup­ply of hy­dro­gen from the Caribbean would al­so be a high­ly sought-af­ter and trad­ed com­mod­i­ty in the glob­al mar­kets. So, com­bine this with the cruise ship in­dus­try for the earn­ings, the for­eign earn­ings of the cruise ship in­dus­try and we be­come eco­nom­i­cal­ly sus­tain­able. I heard His Ex­cel­len­cy men­tion a lot as to what it cost. I al­so have a dream that we would need not do any of this on our own.”

Sab­ga said these plans can on­ly be­come re­al­i­ty if act­ed up­on and he not­ed ANSA McAL has tak­en steps to cre­ate some lev­el of en­er­gy sus­tain­abil­i­ty fol­low­ing its in­vest­ment in a so­lar farm in Cos­ta Ri­ca in 2021. It made fur­ther strides fol­low­ing an agree­ment with Ke­nes­jay Green Ltd, which was signed dur­ing the re­cent­ly held COP 28 in a bid to ac­cel­er­ate green en­er­gy projects in the re­gion.

“What struck me at COP 28, was the sense of ur­gency amongst the busi­ness, gov­ern­ment, and NGOs present. Im­pres­sive­ly, I al­so saw how the Caribbean was deeply en­gaged in be­ing heard in the con­ver­sa­tion. High­light­ing both our re­gion’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and the ad­verse ef­fects of cli­mate change and the lead­er­ship and the lead­er­ship op­por­tu­ni­ty to be an ac­tive part of the green econ­o­my,” Sab­ga ex­plained.

Delv­ing more in­to the green en­er­gy as­pect, he said speed has par­tic­u­lar rel­e­vance when one con­sid­ers hy­dro­gen pro­duc­tion.

“The scale-up of hy­dro­gen tech­nol­o­gy is the sub­ject of sig­nif­i­cant re­search, how­ev­er, the main chal­lenge is not the process. Ex­ist­ing hy­dro­gen tech­nol­o­gy has a proven track record and can form the ba­sis for new plants. At our sub­sidiary ANSA Chem­i­cals, we have been in the prac­tice of elec­trolysing wa­ter for decades, to make chlo­rine and bleach. We are now aim­ing to use emer­gent fu­el cell tech­nol­o­gy and the hy­dro­gen cur­rent­ly pro­duced by that plant dur­ing the elec­trol­y­sis process, to cre­ate a close loop en­er­gy feed­stock sys­tem for the plant. The project is very much in line with our busi­ness sus­tain­abil­i­ty thrust as a group,” Sab­ga said.