As the sun set on COP28 and ne­go­tia­tors went back and forth on the lan­guage in the com­mu­nique to phase out fos­sil fu­els, the Caribbean had al­ready tak­en a mas­sive step to­wards a green­er fu­ture. A lit­tle over a week be­fore, re­gion­al con­glom­er­ate, ANSA McAL, signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) with Ke­nes­jay Green Ltd to pur­sue green op­por­tu­ni­ties that are both avail­able and bad­ly need­ed across the re­gion.

ANSA McAL’s Group CEO, An­tho­ny Sab­ga III, flew to the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates to sign the MOU with Ke­nes­jay’s founder and chair­man, Philip Julien.

“It’s my first time at­tend­ing a COP and it’s re­al­ly quite in­spir­ing to see the mag­ni­tude of this glob­al ef­fort and just see­ing how we, as a re­gion and the ANSA McAL Group in its own way, can play part in that,” the Group CEO told Guardian Me­dia in a one-on-one in­ter­view in Dubai.

With Do­mini­ca well on its way to pur­su­ing ge­ot­her­mal en­er­gy, Sab­ga said the part­ner­ship with Ke­nes­jay of­fers a path­way for re­gion­al en­er­gy in­te­gra­tion, some­thing that is sore­ly need­ed right now.

He went fur­ther in say­ing, “What is clear is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of what we’re col­lec­tive­ly work­ing on has op­por­tu­ni­ty and pos­si­bil­i­ty for the en­tire chain of Cari­com. Some of the ge­ot­her­mal re­sources that ex­ist are way up in the north­ern Caribbean. The the pos­si­bil­i­ty of bring­ing that and in­te­grat­ing it in­to a Cari­com-wide grid and util­is­ing that en­abled by the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the glob­al mar­ket for green hy­dro­gen, that is a mag­nan­i­mous pos­si­bil­i­ty. Above all else, it cre­ates sus­tain­abil­i­ty not just by us­ing re­new­able en­er­gy but cer­tain­ly the pos­si­bil­i­ty of sup­port­ing the re­gion in its much-need­ed abil­i­ty to have for­eign ex­change to par­tic­i­pate in the glob­al econ­o­my.”

It’s a view and vi­sion shared by Julien, who launched New­Gen in T&T in 2020.

With fi­nance for green projects a crit­i­cal fac­tor across the re­gion, the Ke­nes­jay chair­man told Guardian Me­dia this is a game chang­er.

“Hav­ing that part­ner­ship align from in­cep­tion will al­low us to cat­a­pult the num­ber of green projects we could de­vel­op to­geth­er,” said Julien.

The Ke­nes­jay founder has played an in­te­gral role in Do­mini­ca’s thrust in­to ge­ot­her­mal en­er­gy and was present at the coun­try’s sign­ing of an agree­ment with the Neva­da-based com­pa­ny Or­mat in Dubai.

But now, with the back­ing of ANSA McAL to pur­sue such en­deav­ours, Julien added, “We see it al­low­ing us to ac­cel­er­ate de­vel­op­ment of projects with­in the re­gion. We’ve been work­ing with the gov­ern­ment of Do­mini­ca for the past two years to help them chart a green hy­dro­gen, green econ­o­my, and a green eco-in­dus­tri­al park through the har­ness­ing of their ge­ot­her­mal re­serves.

There are al­so oth­er is­lands that are awash with sur­plus re­new­able en­er­gy such as St Kitts and Nevis, St Vin­cent and St Lu­cia and there are al­so coun­tries that have tremen­dous off­shore acreage that has a ripe po­ten­tial for ad­di­tion­al re­new­able en­er­gy gen­er­a­tion through wind, for ex­am­ple, such as Bar­ba­dos.”

With a vi­sion to be able to in­te­grate these re­gion­al green op­por­tu­ni­ties, Julien said hav­ing ANSA McAL “work­ing pow­er­ful­ly” with Ke­nes­jay Green will start to map out col­lec­tive­ly what that will look like, where it be­comes a syn­er­gis­tic re­gion­al green en­er­gy econ­o­my “that can ul­ti­mate­ly turn the Caribbean in­to a net ex­porter of green hy­dro­gen to the world.”

While the MOU has been a land­mark agree­ment for the re­gion, ANSA McAL isn’t new to the green move­ment sweep­ing across the world. In 2018, the re­gion­al group in­vest­ed in wind farms in Cos­ta Ri­ca.

Three years lat­er, ANSA McAL and co-in­vestor MPC Caribbean Clean En­er­gy Fund LLC, Grupo Pais So­lar SA (GPS) along with two ad­di­tion­al mi­nor­i­ty in­vestors from Cana­da, in­di­rect­ly ac­quired full own­er­ship of the Monte Pla­ta So­lar Park in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

“We are well on our way and well ad­vanced in our jour­ney,” Sab­ga said.

In the midst of the glob­al con­fer­ence, the ANSA McAL CEO was not daunt­ed by what this small part of the world can achieve in the re­new­able sphere.

“The con­ver­sa­tion we are hav­ing here cer­tain­ly es­tab­lish­es the Caribbean as a very de­fin­i­tive play­er not with­stand­ing our small size as a re­gion, some of the ge­ot­her­mal re­sources that ex­ist are ma­te­r­i­al and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with the re­gion to tap that for the use of its peo­ple and for the use of our eco­nom­ic sus­tain­abil­i­ty for our fu­ture, that’s su­per ex­cit­ing.”

Sab­ga hailed what he termed “a huge pos­si­bil­i­ty and op­por­tu­ni­ty” in the re­gion for green pow­er­ing and to “re­alise and utilise some of that en­er­gy po­ten­tial.”

How­ev­er, Julien added that with­out the fi­nan­cial back­ing of the pri­vate sec­tor, such un­der­tak­ings would not be pos­si­ble to pur­sue, and the re­gion would be lag­ging be­hind in its en­er­gy tran­si­tion.

“The pri­vate sec­tor can move at a cer­tain speed that the pub­lic sec­tor, for all the right rea­sons, can­not,” he said.

He added, “The pri­vate sec­tor can­not do it alone and the pub­lic sec­tor can­not do it alone. ANSA McAL can­not do it alone. Ke­nes­jay Green can­not do it alone. So the more that we see the pri­vate sec­tor able to bold­ly and con­fi­dent­ly move in­to that space of work­ing the projects from in­cep­tion, the faster this en­er­gy tran­si­tion will be which will ul­ti­mate­ly ben­e­fit all of us.”

Julien’s vi­sion is for all the Caribbean is­lands to work to­geth­er to cre­ate an ‘in­te­grat­ed green en­er­gy re­al­i­sa­tion.’

“By that I mean, in­di­vid­u­al­ly, we have sur­plus sup­plies of re­new­able clean en­er­gy from ge­ot­her­mal-rich coun­tries and we have an im­me­di­ate de­mand for hy­dro­gen in T&T. Link­ing those two to­geth­er will al­low us to col­lec­tive­ly move in­to that en­er­gy tran­si­tion space, where T&T could be the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of green en­er­gy from the re­gion which will al­low us to start to green our petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try.” Julien says, adding that at in turn, will al­low this coun­try to tran­si­tion to green am­mo­nia and methanol ex­ports.

While at the Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence, Sab­ga al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in pan­el dis­cus­sions re­gard­ing en­er­gy tran­si­tion and the move to­wards green hy­dro­gen.

He said he found in­spi­ra­tion in del­e­gates from around the world gath­er­ing in Dubai to tack­le the com­mon threat of cli­mate change “and it lets us know that our pur­pose to in­spire bet­ter choic­es for a bet­ter world is the cor­rect di­rec­tion.”

Julien was al­so buoyed by the num­ber of Caribbean del­e­gates rep­re­sent­ing the re­gion in var­i­ous sec­tors of the con­fer­ence.

He con­clud­ed by say­ing, “It re­al­ly is a one com­mu­ni­ty and one com­mon cause and there are two mes­sages that I’m see­ing; no one’s com­ing to save us and we can not on­ly save our­selves, we can al­so help the plan­et save it­self.”