Nick O’Hara and Rob Fre­da

“The de­f­i­n­i­tion of in­san­i­ty is do­ing the same thing over and over again and ex­pect­ing dif­fer­ent re­sults.” We are all fa­mil­iar with this quote, and yet too of­ten we think it doesn’t ap­ply to us. In the con­text of the cli­mate emer­gency and the need to stop green­house gas emis­sions, the de­f­i­n­i­tion of in­san­i­ty is do­ing the same thing over and over again and striv­ing for the same re­sults.

Per­pet­u­at­ing this kind of in­san­i­ty seems to dom­i­nate the menu for next week’s an­nu­al En­er­gy Con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain, when T&T’s oil and gas in­dus­try con­venes with se­nior politi­cians to dis­cuss a way for­ward. The theme of this year’s event is, “Lever­ag­ing the in­dus­try’s strengths for the en­er­gy tran­si­tion.” The con­fer­ence’s agen­da sug­gests its main course will be serv­ing up more of the same, with few fresh ideas for mean­ing­ful tran­si­tion. 

Make no mis­take, more of the same isn’t sim­ply stor­ing up fu­ture prob­lems. The coun­try al­ready suf­fers from in­creased am­bi­ent tem­per­a­ture and ex­treme weath­er. Ero­sion linked to ris­ing sea lev­els and storm surges is ev­i­dent at pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tions such as Las Cuevas and Blan­chisseuse, on Trinidad’s north­ern coast. Sim­i­lar­ly To­ba­go’s Pi­geon Point, ar­guably the jew­el in the Re­pub­lic’s tourist crown, is fac­ing se­ri­ous ero­sion. And we all know about the floods.

The gov­ern­ment’s 2018 Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and Ca­pac­i­ty As­sess­ment (VCA) re­port called for ur­gent and com­pre­hen­sive adap­ta­tion and mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures. It warned that fail­ure to act im­me­di­ate­ly would have dis­as­trous con­se­quences for na­tion­al food and wa­ter sup­ply, fish­eries stock, phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture, cities, oil and gas and in­dus­tri­al as­sets to name but a few.

Just a few months ago, in her fore­word to the first Bi­en­ni­al Up­date Re­port to the UN Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change, Hon. Camille Robin­son-Reg­is (then Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter) ac­knowl­edged the coun­try’s chal­lenges. She wrote that cli­mate change has the po­ten­tial to un­der­mine T&T’s “pri­or­i­ty sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment ob­jec­tives such as pover­ty erad­i­ca­tion, a healthy en­vi­ron­ment, health care and leav­ing no one be­hind.”

Next week presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty to change course. Held by the En­er­gy Cham­ber for more than 30 years, the En­er­gy Con­fer­ence start­ed out as a pe­tro­le­um con­fer­ence and in essence re­mains such. Whilst en­er­gy tran­si­tion is billed as the fo­cus, the En­er­gy Cham­ber con­venes a sep­a­rate Sus­tain­able En­er­gy Con­fer­ence, fo­cussing on re­new­ables, en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy and de­car­bon­i­sa­tion in the Caribbean re­gion. This sep­a­ra­tion of events speaks vol­umes.

En­sur­ing that the en­er­gy in­dus­try’s ob­jec­tives are aligned with the gov­ern­ment’s stat­ed so­ci­etal ob­jec­tives is much hard­er than us­ing fash­ion­able the­mat­ic lan­guage for con­fer­ences. Ac­cord­ing to its own pro­mo­tion­al lit­er­a­ture, next week’s con­fer­ence is or­gan­ised “by the en­er­gy in­dus­try for the en­er­gy in­dus­try.” This is con­cern­ing, be­cause this is es­sen­tial­ly the old pe­tro­le­um in­dus­try which has no in­cen­tive to change its core func­tion of ex­ploit­ing oil and gas re­serves. In­so­far as de­car­bon­i­sa­tion is cov­ered, there is a risk it will amount to lit­tle more than ‘green­wash­ing’, with the in­dus­try mark­ing its own home­work us­ing in­ad­e­quate in­vestor-led en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial and gov­er­nance (ESG) met­rics.

But we write this to of­fer an­oth­er so­lu­tion, not con­front the oil and gas in­dus­try. Next week’s at­ten­dees are a crit­i­cal part of the so­lu­tion of how we tran­si­tion to de­car­bonised en­er­gy sup­ply. Over many decades T&T has been a leader in de­liv­er­ing oil, nat­ur­al gas and petro­chem­i­cals. To­day it is stuck be­tween a rock and a hard place with the in­her­ent con­flict of pro­duc­ing core prod­ucts whose us­age have the po­ten­tial to be dirty and de­struc­tive.

On the one hand we have the sec­tor that pro­vides growth, jobs and the tax base, on the oth­er those net ze­ro am­bi­tions. Some­thing must give.

Let’s ac­knowl­edge that the in­dus­try is op­er­at­ing in an eco­nom­ic frame­work that is not built for adap­ta­tion– that is not the in­dus­try’s fault. The re­al en­er­gy tran­si­tion we need can­not be left to the in­dus­try alone to fig­ure out.

We should look to tech­nolo­gies that have emerged over the last decade and that are in de­vel­op­ment to­day. If we adopt a more holis­tic mar­ket-fac­ing frame­work in how we think about tran­si­tion, mit­i­ga­tion and as­sets, we can start to thread the eye of this nee­dle.  The fun­da­men­tal chal­lenge is how to tran­si­tion to low/ ze­ro emis­sions and clean sys­tems while gen­er­at­ing prof­its, main­tain­ing job, and tax base lev­els. 

As is the case with any com­plex prob­lem, there are com­plex so­lu­tions. The su­per­fi­cial band-aid that is re­new­able en­er­gy has an up­hill bat­tle on ad­dress­ing the cli­mate cri­sis. The nec­es­sary so­lu­tion is every bit so­cio-po­lit­i­cal as it is tech­no­log­i­cal. It re­quires fun­da­men­tal mind­set shift.

First­ly, com­mu­ni­ties need to tran­si­tion out of com­mod­i­ty de­pen­den­cy. Oil and gas may seem like easy rev­enue, but the long-term val­ue and sus­tain­abil­i­ty is ques­tion­able. Don’t for­get, this is a glob­al mar­ket that T&T has no con­trol over, but rather is swept up by the waves of its volatil­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to Glob­al­Da­ta’s lat­est re­port, nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion in T&T is ex­pect­ed to grow by an av­er­age of two per cent in the next three years and reach over 3,400 mil­lion cu­bic feet per day (mm­cfd). How­ev­er, in 2024, pro­duc­tion will start de­clin­ing at a rate of three per cent to a val­ue of 3,200 mm­cfd in 2025, as­sum­ing no new projects are in­tro­duced to com­pen­sate.

In­stead of re­main­ing trapped, we should nur­ture emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies around high-tech man­u­fac­tur­ing and brands. Lo­calised man­u­fac­tur­ing, not de­pen­dent on glob­al sup­ply chains, lifts up lo­cal economies.

Com­mod­i­ty re­liant coun­tries have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to use in­no­v­a­tive clean tech to cre­ate lo­calised and de­cen­tralised man­u­fac­tur­ing and tourism cor­ri­dors, shift­ing it from com­modi­ties to a larg­er val­ue-added ex­port econ­o­my. This would give T&T not on­ly greater con­trol of its des­tiny, but the prospect of a more pros­per­ous fu­ture which could be sus­tained over the longer term.

Rather than ful­ly de­com­mis­sion­ing (at great cost) off-shore rigs and plat­forms at the end of their life-cy­cle, these as­sets can be tran­si­tioned in­to high-tech off-shore man­u­fac­tur­ing cen­tres. Tech­nol­o­gy al­ready ex­ists to de­vel­op aquapon­ic food pro­duc­tion sys­tems, for ex­am­ple, that would trans­form off­shore sites in­to lo­calised food cen­tres. This could help ad­dress the de­cline in food se­cu­ri­ty—a grow­ing prob­lem in the Caribbean—and halt the trend of de­clin­ing food self-suf­fi­cien­cy… some­thing the cur­rent com­mod­i­ty trap is fail­ing to do.

Off­shore fa­cil­i­ties can al­so be tran­si­tioned in­to pro­duc­ing car­bon neu­tral hy­dro­gen-based fu­els. When com­bined with de­cen­tralised mi­cro-man­u­fac­tur­ing, the clean sys­tem be­comes cir­cu­lar, yield­ing 100 per cent clean prod­ucts and bet­ter economies.

The op­por­tu­ni­ty costs of not fo­cus­ing on these tech­no-eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties will leave us stuck square­ly in the cli­mate and com­mod­i­ty traps.  But guid­ed and en­abled by gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy to di­ver­si­fy and strength­en the econ­o­my, T&T can be a glob­al bea­con in tran­si­tion­ing com­mod­i­ty-de­pen­dent re­gions in­to clean, self-de­pen­dent, and thriv­ing economies.

No­body pre­tends that the path to­wards mean­ing­ful en­er­gy tran­si­tion is not fraught with chal­lenge, both for en­er­gy com­pa­nies and so­ci­ety at large. Whilst the for­mal agen­da for next week has been set, it is not too late to steer dis­cus­sion to­wards new think­ing.

The en­er­gy in­dus­try has a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to use its ex­ten­sive ex­per­tise, knowl­edge and skills to be­come a glob­al leader in de­liv­er­ing clean en­er­gy… and avoid the in­san­i­ty of striv­ing for more of the same.