One of the wor­ry­ing trends for the coun­try is that over the past decade con­sump­tion of elec­tric­i­ty in the res­i­den­tial sec­tor has in­creased by 31 per cent, while in the in­dus­tri­al sec­tor it de­creased by 20 per cent, says Dr Thack­wray Dri­ver, Pres­i­dent and CEO, En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T.

He made the state­ments while de­liv­er­ing the open re­marks at the EU’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the re­port on ‘Set­ting the path for Wind En­er­gy gen­er­a­tion in T&T held at the Hy­att Ho­tel, on Wednes­day.

Dri­ver said re­new­able en­er­gy there­fore, can play an im­por­tant role in re­duc­ing the car­bon in­ten­si­ty of com­modi­ties.

“Low­er-car­bon LNG and low­er-car­bon petro­chem­i­cals will be able to com­mand bet­ter ac­cess to mar­kets and pre­mi­um prices.  The Car­bon Bor­der Ad­just­ment Mech­a­nisms—or CBAMs—be­ing in­tro­duced by the Eu­ro­pean Union mean that there is an eco­nom­ic im­per­a­tive to re­duce the car­bon foot­print of our com­modi­ties (es­pe­cial­ly am­mo­nia in the first in­stance) or those com­modi­ties could face bor­der high­er tax­es in EU mar­kets,” Ram­lo­gan said.

He added that the in­tro­duc­tion of re­new­able sources of en­er­gy and in par­tic­u­lar the avail­abil­i­ty of green hy­dro­gen, which is hy­dro­gen pro­duced from re­new­able en­er­gy, is vi­tal to the long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of T&T’s petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try.

“In­creas­ing in­vest­ment in re­new­ables is not just im­por­tant be­cause of our com­mit­ment to re­duce GHG emis­sions.  It might, at first sight, seem counter-in­tu­itive but in­creas­ing in­vest­ment in re­new­ables re­lates di­rect­ly to two of our five ma­jor ad­vo­ca­cy ar­eas for se­cur­ing the fu­ture of the gas in­dus­try,” Dri­ver added.  

First­ly, he added, bring­ing in re­new­able en­er­gy sources will help to di­vert nat­ur­al gas away from be­ing burnt in tur­bines to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty, to the wealth-cre­at­ing and for­eign ex­change-earn­ing petro­chem­i­cal and LNG sec­tors. 

Ac­cord­ing to En­er­gy Cham­ber Pres­i­dent, the more elec­tric­i­ty this coun­try can gen­er­ate from re­new­ables, the more nat­ur­al gas it can de­liv­er to Point Lisas to pro­duce am­mo­nia, methanol and oth­er chem­i­cals or de­liv­er to At­lantic in Point Fortin to be ex­port­ed as LNG. 

“I should add that LNG plays an im­por­tant glob­al cli­mate change and se­cu­ri­ty role—by off­set­ting coal-gen­er­at­ed pow­er gen­er­a­tion and by help­ing our friends and part­ners in Eu­rope re­duce their re­liance on nat­ur­al gas from Rus­sia, in the af­ter­math of the in­va­sion of Ukraine,” Dri­ver not­ed.

In ad­di­tion, he em­pha­sised that in­tro­duc­ing re­new­ables, en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy has a huge role to play in re­duc­ing the vol­umes of nat­ur­al gas be­ing used in elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion, say­ing that the cur­rent elec­tric­i­ty rate re­view pro­pos­als should be as­sessed in this con­text.