The Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment and the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme has launched the largest ever grant-fund­ed project in this coun­try aimed at re­duc­ing ozone de­ple­tion as well as our cli­mate change am­bi­tions.  

The Glob­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Fa­cil­i­ty grant val­ued at US$5.152 mil­lion will be used over a four-year pe­ri­od to cre­ate a sus­tained mar­ket change to­wards the adop­tion of low-car­bon Re­frig­er­a­tion and Air Con­di­tion­ing (RAC) tech­nolo­gies in this coun­try.  

The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from the Min­istry: 

The Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment and the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) launched the largest ever grant fund­ed project in Trinidad and To­ba­go aimed at meet­ing our com­mit­ments to re­duce ozone de­ple­tion as well as our cli­mate change am­bi­tions.  

The Glob­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Fa­cil­i­ty (GEF) US$5.152 mil­lion grant four-year project en­ti­tled “En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy through the De­vel­op­ment of Low-car­bon RAC Tech­nolo­gies in Trinidad and To­ba­go” aims to cre­ate a sus­tained mar­ket change to­wards the adop­tion of low-car­bon Re­frig­er­a­tion and Air Con­di­tion­ing (RAC) tech­nolo­gies in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The project is led by the Na­tion­al Ozone Unit of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy and Plan­ning Di­vi­sion, Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment. 

Of­fi­cial­ly launched on No­vem­ber 16, 2022 in a cer­e­mo­ny at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St. Au­gus­tine, this project is on the heels of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the 34th Meet­ing of the Par­ties to the Mon­tre­al Pro­to­col on Sub­stances that De­plete the Ozone Lay­er, COP34, in Mon­tre­al from Oc­to­ber 30 to No­vem­ber 4, 2022. Trinidad and To­ba­go is al­so cur­rent­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Unit­ed Na­tions 27th Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties on Cli­mate Change, COP27, in Egypt and is prepar­ing to be present at the 15th Meet­ing of the Par­ties on Bio­di­ver­si­ty, COP15. This en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy project is con­nect­ed to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s com­mit­ments to all of these mul­ti­lat­er­al en­vi­ron­men­tal agree­ments. 

It comes a day af­ter Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, in her coun­try State­ment to world lead­ers pledged Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ef­forts to con­tin­ue mak­ing progress on the cli­mate change agen­da. 

The na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties un­der this project are to: 

(a)       Pro­mote a re­silient whole-of-gov­ern­ment ap­proach to dis­as­ter risk man­age­ment, strength­en ca­pac­i­ties to re­duce risk and build com­mu­ni­ty re­silience to dis­as­ters es­pe­cial­ly with­in vul­ner­a­ble groups; 

(b)       Pro­mote en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy and the ef­fi­cient use of re­sources for in­creas­ing en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty through al­ter­na­tive en­er­gy tech­nolo­gies, re­new­able en­er­gy and en­cour­ag­ing pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment in ar­eas such as low car­bon tech­nolo­gies; and 

(c)       De­vel­op cli­mate change adap­ta­tion and mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies to safe­guard those most af­fect­ed.  

Na­tion­al Ozone Of­fi­cer and Deputy En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­ag­er at the Min­istry of Plan­ning, Dr. Maris­sa Gowrie em­pha­sized that “The out­comes of this project will no doubt as­sist Trinidad and To­ba­go in meet­ing our na­tion­al oblig­a­tions un­der the Mon­tre­al Pro­to­col by pro­vid­ing sup­port to im­prove­ment of tech­nol­o­gy in the RAC sec­tor, and re­duc­ing the emis­sion of these green­house gas­es there­by re­duc­ing the car­bon foot­print of the coun­try.” 

Mr. Ger­ar­do No­to, UNDP Coun­try Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to Trinidad and To­ba­go laud­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ad­vance­ments in this project and this na­tion’s will­ing­ness to be part of the glob­al warm­ing re­sponse. Mr. No­to fur­ther added that there has been record tem­per­a­ture in­creas­es glob­al­ly and Trinidad and To­ba­go is no ex­cep­tion, but this project will help the glob­al warm­ing re­sponse by ad­dress­ing the im­pact of re­frig­er­ants. 

For cit­i­zens, this project will al­so in­tro­duce mea­sures that can re­duce elec­tric­i­ty costs, in­crease en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy and pro­mote more en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, en­er­gy sav­ing and eco­nom­i­cal cool­ing meth­ods in Trinidad and To­ba­go. 

In ad­di­tion to in­te­grat­ing evolv­ing, ozone safe hy­dro­car­bon cool­ing tech­nol­o­gy, this Project al­so seeks to en­sure that mem­bers of the RAC Sec­tor are ad­e­quate­ly trained and ed­u­cat­ed to ad­dress new re­frig­er­ants and equip­ment. As such, a note­wor­thy project com­po­nent is the pro­vi­sion of RAC train­ing air con­di­tion­ing units to al­low tech­ni­cians to re­fine their skills as they ma­nip­u­late the mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy. To this end, the Min­istry would like to thank the UWI, UTT and all the oth­er RAC train­ing schools for part­ner­ing with us on this ac­tiv­i­ty.