GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

There needs to be re­al­is­tic con­ver­sa­tions re­gard­ing the in­cor­po­ra­tion of so­lar in­to the na­tion’s elec­tric­i­ty grid, says En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

“Very of­ten you hear peo­ple say why haven’t we brought on­to our grid in Trinidad the small so­lar and the feed in and this type of thing and I smile. The re­al­i­ty is the elec­tric grid, and we have prob­a­bly one of the most so­phis­ti­cat­ed elec­tric grids in the whole Cari­com re­gion eas­i­ly. The re­al­i­ty is to bring in feed-in so­lar off of rooftops around a coun­try, your grid has to be able to take it,” said Young.

The Min­is­ter of En­er­gy then asked, “Who is go­ing to up­grade the grid? Who is go­ing to put those sub­sta­tions that al­low the pow­er feed from each rooftop in, to then be reg­u­lat­ed and put out on the na­tion­al grid. So, one of the chal­lenges I’d like to put to you all in this con­fer­ence, is have the re­al­is­tic con­ver­sa­tions and dis­cus­sions. Don’t hold on to those nice-sound­ing aca­d­e­m­ic top­ics that very of­ten are forced down our throat,” Young told par­tic­i­pants at yes­ter­day’s Caribbean Sus­tain­able En­er­gy Con­fer­ence.

The event took place at the Hilton ho­tel and the theme of this year’s event was “Col­lab­o­ra­tion for Ac­tion.”

Young not­ed that the re­gion is en­dowed with sub­stan­tial re­sources to en­sure en­er­gy sus­tain­abil­i­ty and en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty in the trans­for­ma­tion to low car­bon economies.

Cit­ing es­ti­mates the Caribbean holds 2,525.9 MegaWatts (MW) of po­ten­tial so­lar en­er­gy, 800.4 MW of po­ten­tial wind en­er­gy, and 3,770 MW of po­ten­tial ge­ot­her­mal

en­er­gy, Young said how­ev­er, the in­stalled op­er­a­tional re­new­able en­er­gy of the Cari­com re­gion, in­clud­ing hy­dro­elec­tric pow­er stands ap­prox­i­mate­ly at a mere 645MW.

Hav­ing the fi­nan­cial fea­si­bil­i­ty to make this hap­pen, he said, re­mains a chal­lenge.

“The truth is the fi­nan­cial fea­si­bil­i­ty. The truth is we are small in a re­gion and the truth is for there to be pri­vate in­vest­ment it has to make fi­nan­cial sense. The key phrase is bank­a­bil­i­ty and I keep rais­ing it over and over and that can keeps get­ting kicked down the road.

“When you look at the small is­land states, our Caribbean neigh­bours, they sim­ply do not have the fi­nan­cial fea­si­bil­i­ty at this stage to bring that on­to their grid,” Young said.

The min­is­ter not­ed that while so­lar and wind tech­nolo­gies, in par­tic­u­lar, have be­come more com­pet­i­tive, he sub­mit­ted there is still a need for as­sis­tance, not nec­es­sar­i­ly in the form of sub­si­dies or in­cen­tives, across the Caribbean.

So­lar, in par­tic­u­lar, the En­er­gy Min­is­ter said ben­e­fits from be­ing rel­a­tive­ly straight­for­ward to con­struct and can be at­trac­tive to fi­nanciers.

“But one of the re­gion’s prob­lems is scale and an­oth­er is bank­a­bil­i­ty, if we are be­ing hon­est,” he em­pha­sised.

Young al­so not­ed that the jour­ney to­wards sus­tain­able en­er­gy in the Caribbean is un­der­way, but to date, the re­gion’s en­er­gy tran­si­tion has been slow and in­cre­men­tal. To gain mo­men­tum, he ad­vised this re­quires the ded­i­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion of in­di­vid­u­als, or­gan­i­sa­tions, and gov­ern­ments.

The min­is­ter al­so not­ed that the In­ter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC) Spe­cial Re­port on Glob­al Warm­ing in­di­cat­ed that emis­sions of green­house gas­es must be cut by 50 per cent by 2030 to lim­it warm­ing to 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius.

Re­cent pro­jec­tions at COP28 have sug­gest­ed achiev­ing these tar­gets will be chal­leng­ing.

How­ev­er, Young de­scribed this pro­posed goal as “quite diplo­mat­ic” adding, “Quite frankly I am not sure we are go­ing to make it.”

He said such a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was not one that re­al­ly lies in the re­gion.

In­stead he said, “It is re­al­ly a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that needs to be car­ried by the wealthy de­vel­oped and de­vel­op­ing coun­tries that are the main emit­ters. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I find too of­ten at these con­fer­ences es­pe­cial­ly at the glob­al ones I at­tend, peo­ple shy away from fac­ing that re­al­i­ty and shy away from call­ing out those who are re­al­ly re­spon­si­ble and those who must re­al­ly cut back on their emis­sions,” Young said.

He cit­ed the use of coal as one such ex­am­ple of emis­sions.

On the tran­si­tion to re­new­ables Young said this is dri­ven not on­ly by cli­mate change as the re­gion is a neg­li­gi­ble emit­ter of car­bon diox­ide, but there is al­so by the need for the re­gion’s en­er­gy sup­ply to be­come more re­silient, sus­tain­able and eco­nom­i­cal.”