En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young says con­ver­sa­tions sur­round­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of col­lab­o­ra­tive re­new­able en­er­gy projects for the re­gion have been pick­ing up mo­men­tum.

Young made the state­ment yes­ter­day dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence held at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre.

“There are three ju­ris­dic­tions in the re­gion that have the land size as well as the pop­u­la­tion size to pur­sue re­new­able projects off of the bat Ja­maica, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and T&T.

“Our con­cern and one of the things that we have re­al­ly been push­ing with this en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty com­mit­tee that was formed un­der the chair­man­ship of Dr (Kei­th) Row­ley and Vice Pres­i­dent (Ka­mala) Har­ris is how do we en­gage the rest of the re­gion, how do we en­gage projects that as we say may not be bank­able on a typ­i­cal scale for the rest of the re­gion, some of the small­er is­lands. And I am push­ing them re­al­ly and I think there is in­ter­est in can we look at with some of our small­er Cari­com neigh­bours de­vel­op­ment of cer­tain projects and then cross is­land the pow­er sup­ply,” Young said

“So there­fore what you are do­ing re­al­ly is pool­ing the re­spec­tive re­sources of pop­u­la­tion, so they can pay for it, but then al­so you may be able to do ther­mal in one is­land and you may be able to do so­lar in an­oth­er, wind and in sep­a­rate ju­ris­dic­tions not cross the hur­dle of bank­a­bil­i­ty,” he said.

Young said he is try­ing to progress those con­ver­sa­tions to ben­e­fit the Cari­com re­gion and they are ac­tu­al­ly pick­ing up some trac­tion.

“Al­so an­oth­er plank of the con­ver­sa­tion and in par­tic­u­lar this is where we are call­ing up­on Guyana and Suri­name and even the avail­able re­sources in Venezuela with T&T if there is that col­lab­o­ra­tion we can utilise the gas and we can pro­duce LNG for ex­am­ple so you have some of the oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions look­ing at can they use LNG for re­gasi­fi­ca­tion to sup­ply their own pow­er grids as well as pro­vide am­mo­nia, methanol which we know are some of the clean­er sources of car­ry­ing clean en­er­gy and green en­er­gy,” Young said.

“So these are the con­ver­sa­tions and I am re­al­ly push­ing for us to move be­yond con­ver­sa­tion in­to projects and I have to say it has been pick­ing up mo­men­tum which is why I am go­ing to re-en­gage with the en­er­gy ex­perts out of the US State De­part­ment in a cou­ple of weeks in Hous­ton,” he said.