A pro­pos­al from an in­de­pen­dent mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary team has pre­sent­ed a strat­e­gy for de­vel­op­ing a wind in­dus­try in T&T cov­er­ing the pe­ri­od un­til 2035.

The study un­der­tak­en be­tween Sep­tem­ber 2022 and April 2023 was com­piled by Nikos Sakel­lar­i­ou, Stephen Badrie, Dale Ram­lakhan, San­ja Sim­monds, Randy Ra­mad­har Singh and Sarah Ho­sein.

The re­port, which was made pub­lic last week, not­ed that achiev­ing 2 gi­gawatts (GW) of wind ca­pac­i­ty by 2035 would re­quire in­vest­ments of more than US$7 to US8 bil­lion and can be achieved with the in­volve­ment of in­vestors and the com­mer­cial bank­ing sec­tor or de­vel­op­ment fi­nance in­sti­tu­tions.

The pro­pos­al’s aim is to cre­ate a sus­tain­able en­er­gy fu­ture for the coun­try while pro­mot­ing growth and re­duc­ing green­house gas emis­sions, out­lin­ing that suc­cess will de­pend on the ac­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion of stake­hold­ers, name­ly the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs, State agen­cies and tech­nocrats, fund­ing agen­cies and de­vel­op­ers, fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and, cru­cial­ly, the pri­vate sec­tor.

Fur­ther, the study said the Gov­ern­ment will play a crit­i­cal role in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the wind in­dus­try by pro­mul­gat­ing a vi­sion for wind; amend­ing and en­act­ing laws and reg­u­la­tions sup­port­ing a pol­i­cy frame­work that pro­motes growth; ini­tial­ly pro­vid­ing fi­nan­cial and eco­nom­ic in­cen­tives; and es­tab­lish­ing a trans­par­ent process for de­vel­op­ing wind en­er­gy projects ac­cord­ing to the best in­ter­na­tion­al prac­tices.

The re­port builds on the work of a base­line study where an analy­sis of suit­able lo­ca­tions in T&T was con­duct­ed. That study iden­ti­fyed po­ten­tial util­i­ty-sized wind­farm sites, both on­shore and off­shore. These sites were iden­ti­fied and ranked for suit­abil­i­ty to­geth­er with an es­ti­mate of their lev­elised cost of elec­tric­i­ty.

For the coun­try to ben­e­fit from its un­tapped wind en­er­gy po­ten­tial, a clear and trans­par­ent le­gal and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work should be adopt­ed to ef­fec­tive­ly en­able wind en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment.

There­fore, an as­sess­ment of the le­gal and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work as it per­tains to wind en­er­gy was al­so con­duct­ed to iden­ti­fy gaps to help cre­ate a sus­tain­able wind en­er­gy in­dus­try.

Ac­cord­ing to the pro­pos­al, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2.75 GW of on­shore wind pow­er is ex­pect­ed to be avail­able and 32 GW off­shore.

In out­lin­ing how the pro­pos­al will be ex­e­cut­ed the study ex­plained, “To achieve the tar­get of two GW in­stalled wind ca­pac­i­ty by 2035, the ac­tions pro­posed are time bound in se­quen­tial hori­zons/mile­stones. To build lo­cal ca­pac­i­ties and ca­pa­bil­i­ties the wind jour­ney should start from ex­ploit­ing the on­shore wind en­er­gy po­ten­tial and grad­u­al­ly move to­wards ex­ploit­ing its off­shore vast po­ten­tial,” the re­port said.

It added that while dis­crete projects can be de­vel­oped on an ad hoc ba­sis, the cre­ation of an in­dus­try that can “green” the coun­try’s en­er­gy mix and add fur­ther val­ue to the lo­cal petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try, must be care­ful­ly thought out, nur­tured, and en­abled.

Pro­posed leg­isla­tive amend­ments

To de­vel­op wind en­er­gy in the coun­try, the pol­i­cy, le­gal and reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment will need to in­clude pro­vi­sions en­abling the up­take of the wind in­dus­try.

The study made sev­er­al sug­ges­tions to en­sure that the tran­si­tion to wind pow­er in the na­tive pow­er gen­er­a­tion ma­trix is just, in­clu­sive and eq­ui­table.

Re­gard­ing the leg­isla­tive re­view process, the re­port said if it is de­ter­mined that leg­isla­tive ac­tion is nec­es­sary, then the min­is­ter should sub­mit the pro­pos­al to the Cab­i­net for ap­proval along with a re­quest that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs be tasked with draft­ing the law.

On spe­cif­ic leg­is­la­tion the study ad­vised that while no amend­ments are pro­posed for the EMA Act how­ev­er, it is sug­gest­ed that the EMA in­te­grate in­to its li­cens­ing and per­mit­ting process, a new reg­u­la­tion to the ef­fect: “For any projects which in­volve the use of so­lar en­er­gy or wind en­er­gy for the pro­duc­tion of elec­tric­i­ty, the board of the EMA shall treat with these projects as pri­or­i­ty and en­sure that mea­sured against best glob­al prac­tice, a time­ly and just de­ci­sion be made for which the board will pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive ex­pla­na­tion to the min­is­ter with­in one year of the ini­tial ap­pli­ca­tion for such projects.”

Per­tain­ing to the T&TEC Act there is a rec­om­men­da­tion for a new clause or sec­tion of the ex­ist­ing T&TEC Act en­ti­tled “Wind Pow­er.”

“A stan­dard in­ter­con­nec­tion agree­ment and grid code should be de­vel­oped to en­sure that de­vel­op­ers are aware of the stan­dards and reg­u­la­tions that gov­ern in­ter­con­nec­tion with the na­tion­al grid.

“The claus­es would in­tro­duce the guar­an­tee of in­ter­con­nec­tion, costs of in­ter­con­nec­tion, grid up­grades costs, and com­mit­ment off­take gen­er­at­ed elec­tric­i­ty,” the pro­pos­al fur­ther ad­vised.

The claus­es, it said, would in­tro­duce the guar­an­tee of in­ter­con­nec­tion, costs of in­ter­con­nec­tion, grid up­grades costs, and com­mit­ment off­take gen­er­at­ed elec­tric­i­ty.

The study al­so rec­om­mend­ed that the RIC Act should be amend­ed to sup­port the de­ploy­ment of util­i­ty-scale wind pow­er by con­sid­er­a­tion of a num­ber of is­sues which will al­so be ad­dressed in the amend­ments to the T&TEC Act.

The pro­pos­al added that these would in­clude the im­pos­ing and col­lec­tion of li­cense fees; and en­sur­ing that ser­vice providers make a suf­fi­cient re­turn to fund es­sen­tial in­vest­ment.

The act should al­so clear­ly out­line a trans­par­ent and ac­count­able process on pro­vid­ing rec­om­men­da­tions on li­cense awards and mon­i­tor­ing and en­forc­ing com­pli­ance with li­cense con­di­tions.

Per­tain­ing to lo­cal con­tent pol­i­cy and par­tic­i­pa­tion, the study said to cre­ate a sus­tain­able wind in­dus­try in T&T, spe­cial em­pha­sis must be giv­en to de­vel­op­ing the lo­cal tal­ent in all ar­eas of the wind val­ue chain.

Re­lat­ing to fi­nanc­ing op­tions for wind en­er­gy projects, the study said wind projects are cap­i­tal-in­ten­sive, out­lin­ing that main fi­nanc­ing op­tions to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed for the de­vel­op­ment of the wind en­er­gy sec­tor in the coun­try would in­volve for in­stance, blend­ed fi­nanc­ing, a com­bi­na­tion of eq­ui­ty and non-re­course debt (project fi­nance) or bal­ance sheet fi­nance.