Ryan Ba­choo

As the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­fer­ence of Par­ties (COP27) fo­cused on en­er­gy on Tues­day at the on­go­ing event in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in­dus­try ex­perts dis­sect­ed where T&T was in terms of its own en­er­gy tran­si­tion quest to move away from fos­sil fu­els.

One of the emerg­ing trends was green hy­dro­gen, a cause which Ke­nes­jay Green chair­man Philip Julien is lead­ing.

How­ev­er, the con­cept has been slow in mak­ing an im­pact T&T and oth­er parts of the world.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day at the con­fer­ence, Julien ex­plained, “I think the chal­lenge the world is cur­rent­ly fac­ing is the eco­nom­ics of it. For ex­am­ple, the tech­nol­o­gy in green hy­dro­gen is im­prov­ing, the price point is com­ing down. I think the world is at that point where it has to bal­ance the eco­nom­ic re­quire­ment with en­vi­ron­men­tal im­per­a­tive.”

While Julien un­der­stands the con­cerns of the fi­nances re­quired to in­vest in green hy­dro­gen, he is con­fi­dent gov­ern­ments will soon see it as an al­ter­na­tive, as they tran­si­tion from fos­sil fu­els to a green­er way of op­er­at­ing.

“I think as the world recog­nis­es more and more the ur­gency of hav­ing to do some­thing, we will see more and more of that arise where the con­sumer starts de­mand­ing a more green val­ue chain,” he added.

It’s a point Unit­ed Na­tions Glob­al Am­bas­sador for Cli­mate Change Rac­quel Moses backed up a day be­fore at a side event host­ed by the NPC Part­ner­ship called Ma­te­ri­al­is­ing the Caribbean Green Hy­dro­gen Op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Moses said the Caribbean must re­alise the way the world is go­ing and grab such op­por­tu­ni­ties as they arise.

She told the event, “There is this enor­mous mo­men­tum and po­ten­tial that is tak­ing place and we need to cap­i­talise on that... Mar­itime is go­ing deep on green hy­dro­gen. The air­line in­dus­try is look­ing at green hy­dro­gen as well and what is our ma­jor in­dus­try in the re­gion? It’s tourism.

“So, we should be talk­ing to the part­ners that are al­ready our cus­tomers about their green hy­dro­gen tran­si­tion and how do we take ad­van­tage of what we are al­ready do­ing and the po­ten­tial that we have to build our economies up?”

Julien told Guardian Me­dia that it will soon be­come un­avoid­able, as the world seeks more en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly ways of liv­ing to stave off the ef­fects of cli­mate change.

He said, “I think the eco­nom­ics are go­ing to dri­ve the kind of ur­gency that we would want to see in T&T when things like car­bon tax­es start be­ing im­posed, things like green pre­mi­um start be­ing paid for things like green am­mo­nia and green methanol. I think we’re in the place where the green bot­tom line will dri­ve an ur­gency. We’re not there yet but it’s com­ing. It’s in­evitable. I don’t think the world is pre­pared to ac­cept the rise in tem­per­a­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly as vul­ner­a­ble is­land states, we have to de­mand change.”

Yet, even in T&T, the en­er­gy sec­tor has been slow to grav­i­tate to­wards green hy­dro­gen and Julien un­der­stands why.

“I think T&T is in that quin­tes­sen­tial en­er­gy tran­si­tion space where to­day’s bread and but­ter is cov­ered by fos­sil fu­els but to­mor­row is cov­ered by green. I think it’s now at that point where pri­vate sec­tor has dri­ven it as far as we can and we’re now look­ing for the pri­vate-pub­lic part­ner­ship to re­al­ly get it over the line,” he said.

This sto­ry was pub­lished with the sup­port of Cli­mate Track­er.