The con­struc­tion of this coun­try’s first so­lar park at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port will cut down the fa­cil­i­ty’s use of tra­di­tion­al elec­tric­i­ty by 3.5 per cent.

Fund­ed by a Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) grant, the so­lar park will bring T&T clos­er to re­duc­ing its car­bon foot­print as coun­tries around the world race to slow glob­al warm­ing.

At a sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny at the VIP lounge of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port yes­ter­day, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said the project was a mon­u­men­tal one for the coun­try.

“ It is the start of what we are hop­ing to get done as a gov­ern­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go, which is more of a move to­wards re­new­ables, re­plac­ing nat­ur­al gas for elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion. It is al­so sig­nif­i­cant that this has been done us­ing EU fund­ing, via grants and it’s not fi­nanc­ing, so we’re hap­py for that part­ner­ship,” Young said.

He said once the project is com­plete, it will re­duce the air­port’s re­liance on elec­tric­i­ty pro­duced us­ing nat­ur­al gas.

Young said in the com­ing weeks, he hopes to see the com­plet­ed plans for the con­struc­tion of an even larg­er so­lar park, be­ing built by BP Light­house.

He al­so re­vealed some plans of the Gov­ern­ment for more re­new­able en­er­gy projects.

“There­after, we will be go­ing back to Cab­i­net to sug­gest the use of il­le­gal­ly quar­ried lands to cov­er them with so­lar pan­els, we are work­ing with the EU to wind re­new­able re­sources as well,” Young said.

He said while the amount of elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed by the so­lar park would not be a “sig­nif­i­cant amount,” any switch to re­new­able en­er­gy sources was wel­come.

EU Am­bas­sador, Pe­ter Cavendish said the project will cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$12 mil­lion.

He hopes it will be com­plet­ed in un­der a year.

“This is a grant, it isn’t a loan, we give mon­ey we don’t lend mon­ey, this is one of many projects we have un­der­tak­en in this coun­try,” Cavendish said.

He gave an idea of what kind of im­pact the so­lar park will have on the air­port’s elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion.

“We have var­i­ous es­ti­mates from sav­ings up to over 500 met­ric tonnes of car­bon diox­ide be­ing saved each year to a larg­er fig­ure of 1,000 met­ric tonnes, we’ll see the re­al­i­ty but the fig­ure is al­ready a very sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion, we are talk­ing about 3.5 per cent up­wards of the en­er­gy con­sump­tion of the air­port,” Cavendish said.

He praised T&T for tak­ing steps to meet its na­tion­al­ly de­ter­mined con­tri­bu­tions for green­house gas emis­sions and striv­ing to­ward its Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals.

Cavendish said talks were al­so on­go­ing be­tween T&T and the EU to in­crease the LNG ex­ports from this coun­try.

“We are hope­ful it will be able to help the Eu­ro­pean Union more, sad­ly due to the war in Ukraine we have a grave dis­rup­tion in en­er­gy sup­plies and we are look­ing to our friends and part­ners world­wide but of course, we will pay the mar­ket rate, we are not look­ing for favouritism on that grounds,” he said.

Air­port Au­thor­i­ty (AATT) chair­man, Christo­pher Al­cazar said he was very ex­cit­ed about the project, which he de­scribed as a sig­nif­i­cant one to re­duce green­house gas emis­sions.