Kalain Ho­sein

Me­te­o­rol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

Green en­er­gy pro­duc­tion is one step clos­er to tak­ing an in­te­gral part of the Caribbean's en­er­gy land­scape fol­low­ing the sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) be­tween ANSA McAL Lim­it­ed and Ke­nes­jay Green Lim­it­ed (KGL) at COP28 in Dubai, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, on Sat­ur­day.

The MOU, signed by ANSA McAL Group CEO An­tho­ny N. Sab­ga III and KGL Chair­man and Founder CEO Philip Ju­lian, aims to ac­cel­er­ate the de­vel­op­ment of new, com­mer­cial­ly vi­able green en­er­gy projects in the Caribbean re­gion.

The Group CEO and Mr Ju­lian were joined by the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment for T&T, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, Do­mini­ca's Min­is­ter for the En­vi­ron­ment, Rur­al Mod­erni­sa­tion, Kali­na­go Up­lift­ment and Con­stituen­cy Em­pow­er­ment, Co­zi­er Fred­er­ick, the CEO of Cli­mate Re­silience Ex­e­cu­tion Agency for Do­mini­ca (CREAD), Francine Baron, as well as St Kitts and Nevis' Min­is­ter of Pub­lic In­fra­struc­ture, En­er­gy and Util­i­ties, Do­mes­tic Trans­port, In­for­ma­tion, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Tech­nol­o­gy and Posts, Kon­ris May­nard at the NDC Part­ner­ship Pavil­ion at COP28, in Ex­po City, Dubai.

Mr Sab­ga III stat­ed that the Caribbean re­gion has pro­duced a "phe­nom­e­nal in­dus­try" com­ple­ment­ed by "phe­nom­e­nal peo­ple," and "the tal­ent and ca­pa­bil­i­ty ex­ists," and this is the di­rec­tion ANSA McAL wants to head. In a state­ment, he said, "I am proud of this first step tak­en to­day to part­ner with KGL to ex­plore projects to har­ness the Caribbean's nat­ur­al re­sources to pro­vide more sus­tain­able so­lu­tions that im­pact the lives of the peo­ple of our re­gion. It is our in­tent to bring con­sid­er­able re­sources in peo­ple, cap­i­tal and tech­nol­o­gy to sup­port the ef­forts of our re­gion in the fight for a green­er fu­ture."

At the sign­ing, Mr. Ju­lian said, "This MOU with a Caribbean cor­po­rate heavy­weight like ANSA McAL is an im­por­tant next step in ad­vanc­ing po­ten­tial green projects in the re­gion, in­clud­ing oth­er ge­ot­her­mal-rich coun­tries in the Caribbean."

Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment for T&T, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, re­stat­ed the role the pri­vate sec­tor can play in achiev­ing the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals, which is in line with ANSA McAL's re­cent­ly up­dat­ed pur­pose – "In­spir­ing Bet­ter Choic­es for a Bet­ter World." Min­is­ter Beck­les con­grat­u­lat­ed both com­pa­nies at the sign­ing, "There's no bet­ter joy for me than to be ac­tu­al­ly here, present, wit­ness­ing the sign­ing. I think we are ex­treme­ly proud of this ini­tia­tive." She added, "We're look­ing for­ward to hear­ing a lot more, and I'm look­ing for­ward to talk­ing about this as one of the suc­cess sto­ries in the Caribbean."

Sev­er­al green hy­dro­gen ini­tia­tives are al­ready be­ing cham­pi­oned across the Caribbean by KGL.

The Point Lisas New­Gen Project

The com­pa­ny has kicked off a US $350 mil­lion project in T&T, which Ju­lian al­so leads as founder and CEO of New­Gen En­er­gy Lim­it­ed, which is set to be a low-car­bon, green hy­dro­gen pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty. New­Gen has part­nered with Trinidad's Ni­tro­gen Com­pa­ny's (Trin­gen) am­mo­nia com­plex, co-owned by Yara Trinidad, to re­duce its green­house gas emis­sions by re­plac­ing gas with wa­ter in its pro­duc­tion, and ac­cord­ing to Ju­lian, "the much-need­ed hy­dro­gen feed­stock for Point Lisas," the es­tab­lished in­dus­tri­al es­tate lit­tered with petro­chem­i­cal fa­cil­i­ties.

Based on New­Gen's plans, when com­plet­ed, it will be the world's largest clean hy­dro­gen-pro­duc­ing fa­cil­i­ty of its kind, us­ing a com­bi­na­tion of so­lar and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy-sourced pow­er. It will gen­er­ate car­bon-free hy­dro­gen to meet 20 per cent of the hy­dro­gen re­quire­ment for Trin­gen. Once up and run­ning, the project will save ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200,000 tonnes of car­bon diox­ide an­nu­al­ly.

The Point Lisas project will re­quire 130 megawatts (MW) of elec­tric­i­ty, and 30 MW will come from the new Light­source bp's Brechin Cas­tle So­lar Farm project, which is ex­pect­ed to be­come op­er­a­tional by the sec­ond quar­ter of 2025 and is cur­rent­ly un­der con­struc­tion. The re­main­der of the elec­tric­i­ty will come from Pow­er­Gen Point Lisas and on­ly for New­Gen's plant. It will not af­fect the ex­ist­ing sup­ply to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion's (T&TEC) res­i­den­tial, com­mer­cial, and in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers. Wa­ter for the need­ed elec­trol­y­sis will come from T&T's Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty but will ac­count for 0.1 per cent of the na­tion's wa­ter sup­ply, and even this wa­ter de­mand will re­duce as the plant be­gins and con­tin­ues op­er­a­tions.

Do­mini­ca's Ge­ot­her­mal En­er­gy Ex­pand­ing

Mean­while, in Do­mini­ca, KGL signed an MOU with the Gov­ern­ment of Do­mini­ca at COP26 two years ago to de­vel­op the first large-scale green hy­dro­gen ge­ot­her­mal de­vel­op­ment in the Caribbean. This project, which is ex­pect­ed to pro­duce 7 megawatts of pow­er from the Rosseau Val­ley to Do­mini­ca, will be com­plet­ed by the end of 2023. Cur­rent­ly, 28 per cent of Do­mini­ca's en­er­gy re­quire­ments are met from re­new­ables such as hy­dropow­er and wind. The ge­ot­her­mal risk mit­i­ga­tion project should low­er elec­tric­i­ty costs and boost the share of re­new­able en­er­gy. The Do­mini­can gov­ern­ment hopes to sup­ply 23,000 homes with ge­ot­her­mal en­er­gy, rep­re­sent­ing some 90 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion, and ex­port elec­tric­i­ty to the French is­lands of Guade­loupe and Mar­tinique.

Speak­ing at the MOU sign­ing, the CREAD CEO Francine Baron said, "Do­mini­ca is mov­ing stead­fast pro­duc­tion of its first ge­ot­her­mal aim to de­vel­op our ge­ot­her­mal re­sources fur­ther to al­low for in­vest­ments at in­dus­tri­al scale. This would in­clude es­tab­lish­ing a green eco-in­dus­tri­al park and de­vel­op­ing green prod­ucts for ex­port, in­clud­ing green hy­dro­gen, green, am­mo­nia and green fu­el." She added that dur­ing COP28, they ex­pect to sign an agree­ment with a new de­vel­op­er to de­vel­op a 10-megawatt ge­ot­her­mal plant.

This sto­ry was pub­lished with the sup­port Cli­mate Track­er through the COP28 Cli­mate Jus­tice Re­port­ing Fel­low­ship.