Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says Spey­side High School in To­ba­go is the first school to re­ceive so­lar pan­els as part of the Eu­ro­pean Union’s Glob­al Cli­mate Change Al­liance + (GC­CA+) So­lar Pho­to­volta­ic (PV) In­stal­la­tions man­aged by the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP). The cer­e­mo­ny on March 28 was at­tend­ed by THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine and UNDP Res­i­dent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ger­ar­do No­to.

This So­lar Pho­to­volta­ic Sys­tem will pro­vide pow­er to the Sci­ence Lab, from ba­sic light­ing to es­sen­tial equip­ment used by the stu­dents in the course of their work. The sys­tem in­stalled has a ca­pac­i­ty of 5.3 kilo­watts (kW) and is ex­pect­ed to pro­duce 9,500 kilo­watt hours (kWh) of en­er­gy on an an­nu­al ba­sis, while at the same time re­duc­ing car­bon diox­ide emis­sions by 6,238 kg/year.

Min­is­ter Beck­les added that the GC­CA+ so­lar in­stal­la­tion project, launched in 2021, aims to boost Trinidad and To­ba­go’s tran­si­tion to re­new­able en­er­gy through the in­stal­la­tions of small-scale roof-mount­ed So­lar Pho­to­volta­ic (PV) so­lar pan­els at 12 sites across the na­tion. These in­stal­la­tions form part of a EU­RO 2.4 mil­lion project en­ti­tled ‘Sup­port to the Im­ple­men­ta­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tion’, de­signed to as­sist the coun­try to­wards a low car­bon path, and in­crease its cli­mate re­silience in keep­ing with stat­ed tar­gets and com­mit­ments un­der the 2015 Paris Agree­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter Beck­les, “Spey­side High School is priv­i­leged in this re­gard.”