Kalain Ho­sein

Me­te­o­rol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go is al­ready a world leader in the pro­duc­tion of am­mo­nia and fer­tilis­er, ex­port­ing be­tween 20 and 25 per cent of the globe's sup­ply, ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny Pres­i­dent, Mark Lo­quan. How­ev­er, this am­mo­nia pro­duc­tion is de­rived from nat­ur­al gas – a fos­sil fu­el - which is then used to pro­duce hy­dro­gen at Point Lisas and fed in­to one of the many am­mo­nia and methanol plants on the in­dus­tri­al es­tate.

The coun­try has faced a chal­leng­ing land­scape in re­cent years, with nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion de­clin­ing since 2010, lead­ing to mul­ti­ple plant clo­sures in the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, fluc­tu­at­ing un­em­ploy­ment and earn­ings from en­er­gy-re­lat­ed ex­ports.

The New­Gen Project

A new de­vel­op­ment in Point Lisas, the New­Gen green hy­dro­gen plant, is ex­pect­ed to be­gin bring­ing a low-car­bon source of hy­dro­gen to the mar­ket, be­com­ing one of the world's largest fa­cil­i­ties of its kind when com­plet­ed by 2025. New­Gen is a sub­sidiary of Kens­es­jay Green Lim­it­ed (KGL), with French com­pa­ny HDF En­er­gy as the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er.

At COP28, HDF En­er­gy Vice Pres­i­dent for the Caribbean, Thibault Mé­nage, ex­plained that the Eu­ro­pean Union is the world's largest im­porter world­wide, with France be­ing the fourth largest im­porter of am­mo­nia from T&T, af­ter the Unit­ed States, Mex­i­co, and Mo­roc­co.

How­ev­er, as the world be­gins its green tran­si­tion, pro­duc­tion de­rived from fos­sil fu­els or high-car­bon sources comes un­der in­creased scruti­ny and tax­a­tion. In its cur­rent pro­duc­tion, T&T's hy­dro­gen and by-prod­ucts will be no ex­cep­tion. Come 2026, all prod­ucts com­ing in­to the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) will be sub­ject to their Car­bon Bor­der Ad­just­ment Mech­a­nism (CBAM).

EU im­porters will have to re­port the green­house gas emis­sions em­bed­ded dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of im­port­ed vol­umes of iron and steel, alu­mini­um, ce­ment, elec­tric­i­ty, fer­tilis­ers and hy­dro­gen. Then, im­porters would need to pur­chase cer­tifi­cates to cov­er these car­bon diox­ide emis­sions to put for­eign pro­duc­ers on a lev­el foot­ing with EU in­dus­tries that must buy per­mits from the EU car­bon mar­ket when they pol­lute.

Mé­nage ex­plained that with this new tax, the cost of pro­duc­ing hy­dro­gen-re­lat­ed prod­ucts will sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­crease due to the car­bon diox­ide emis­sions it takes to make. "A ton of am­mo­nia in Trinidad is be­ing pro­duced with the equiv­a­lent of 11 kilo­grams of CO2 per kilo­gram of hy­dro­gen. The New­Gen project has been cer­ti­fied in terms of hy­dro­gen pro­duc­tion at less than one kilo­gram of CO2 per kilo­gram of hy­dro­gen feed­ing in­to ei­ther an am­mo­nia plant or a steel plant that we are look­ing to con­tribute to the feed­stock."

How­ev­er, with the New­Gen project al­ready years in­to de­vel­op­ment, Mé­nage calls on the gov­ern­ment of T&T to align with stake­hold­ers to make green projects hap­pen with­in a rea­son­able time­line. Philip Ju­lian, the Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of New­Gen, elab­o­rat­ed at the COP28 event that he and oth­er green stake­hold­ers have de­vel­oped a re­port iden­ti­fy­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties and rec­om­men­da­tions for a more ef­fi­cient means of get­ting clean en­er­gy projects done in T&T, from the ap­provals process and be­yond. 

He de­liv­ered the re­port to T&T's Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, at the CARI­COM Pavil­ion in Ex­po City, Dubai.

Af­ter re­ceiv­ing the re­port, Beck­les said, "So of­ten, we hear of poli­cies not made. We hear dis­cus­sions around the ab­sence of da­ta, analy­sis, and re­search. Those are all top­ics that you would hear over and over in vir­tu­al­ly any space and any par­tic­u­lar area that has been dis­cussed. This re­port is ben­e­fi­cial not just for the pol­i­cy­mak­ers, the politi­cians, the aca­d­e­mics, Trinidad and To­ba­go, and of course, the wider re­gion be­cause it al­lows the pos­si­bil­i­ty to make the right de­ci­sions based on the re­search that has been done."

Cre­at­ing a Sus­tain­able Caribbean

Green hy­dro­gen is pro­duced via elec­trol­y­sis, where elec­tric­i­ty pass­es through wa­ter, sep­a­rat­ing oxy­gen and hy­dro­gen, pro­duc­ing no car­bon diox­ide. How­ev­er, it does re­quire a sub­stan­tial elec­tric­i­ty source, and ac­cord­ing to Ju­lian, the elec­tric­i­ty could come from re­new­able sources from oth­er Caribbean is­lands.

The New­Gen fa­cil­i­ty is just part of Ju­lian's vi­sion for the Caribbean in cre­at­ing an in­ter­con­nect­ed, sus­tain­able fu­ture of green hy­dro­gen and re­new­able en­er­gy. KGL has been work­ing with Do­mini­ca to es­tab­lish a ge­ot­her­mal en­er­gy plant, which is ex­pect­ed to be­come op­er­a­tional by the end of this year.

New­Gen re­quires 130 megawatts of elec­tric­i­ty. Ac­cord­ing to Ju­lian, Do­mini­ca has or­ders of mag­ni­tude high­er than what is need­ed – near­ly 1.4 gi­gawatts of ge­ot­her­mal po­ten­tial, with even more un­tapped sources across the re­gion. 

"The Caribbean is sit­ting on 24 gi­gawatts of po­ten­tial en­er­gy. Con­cep­tu­al­ly, Do­mini­ca would ex­port green elec­tric­i­ty to Trinidad. Trinidad would con­vert green elec­tric­i­ty to green hy­dro­gen, am­mo­nia, and methanol. Trinidad would ex­port that as an in­ter­na­tion­al com­mod­i­ty to the EU and oth­ers, and the rev­enues from that would flow not on­ly to Trinidad but back through to the rest of the Caribbean, all re­al­is­ing a green en­er­gy rev­enue from com­ing to­geth­er from that in­ter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty per­spec­tive," Ju­lian ex­plained.

But this con­nec­tiv­i­ty is cost­ly. Ju­lian added, "That grid in­ter­con­nec­tion we're look­ing at, we're es­ti­mat­ing US $3 bil­lion to US $5 bil­lion. And in the re­gion­al hy­dro­gen econ­o­my, over­all de­vel­op­ment is in the space of US $50 bil­lion-plus - huge num­bers."

Ju­lian al­so ex­plained that through a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) with ANSA McAL, he is look­ing to pur­sue these kinds of busi­ness cas­es.

Al­so speak­ing at the event, ANSA McAL CEO An­tho­ny N. Sab­ga III said the con­glom­er­ate's abil­i­ty to work with mul­ti­lat­er­al or­gan­i­sa­tions and the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank will help bring in the dol­lars and the ca­pac­i­ty. He added, "The op­por­tu­ni­ty and the vi­sion por­trayed is sus­tain­abil­i­ty in its to­tal­i­ty, be­cause not on­ly is it green and clean­er, but al­so sus­tain­able eco­nom­i­cal­ly, in that it can cre­ate and gen­er­ate much need­ed for­eign ex­change that could sus­tain the re­gion." 

Specif­i­cal­ly, on the MOU with Ju­lian, the con­glom­er­ate's CEO ex­plained, "For the last 50 years, we have been the chlor-al­ka­li pro­duc­er in the re­gion. Chlor-al­ka­li is gen­er­at­ed via the elec­trolysing of brine, so this time, tech­nol­o­gy that will sort of an­chor the pos­si­bil­i­ty for the green hy­dro­gen econ­o­my is some­thing that we are very ex­pe­ri­enced with and have a wealth of ca­pac­i­ty, ex­pe­ri­ence, and hu­man cap­i­tal. It's some­thing we see our­selves well placed for. It's well aligned with our or­gan­i­sa­tion­al pur­pose, which is in­spir­ing bet­ter choic­es for a bet­ter world."

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