Pe­ter Christo­pher

While Trinidad and To­ba­go’s im­me­di­ate fu­ture re­mains with the hy­dro­car­bon mar­ket, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day that both so­lar and wind en­er­gy were pro­grammes were in the works, with wind be­ing rec­om­mend­ed as the bet­ter opti­no for this coun­try.

Row­ley made the com­ment yes­ter­day as he ad­dressed the En­er­gy Con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain.

Row­ley said with re­spect to the dis­cus­sion on re­new­ables, the Roadmap for a Green Econ­o­my in T&T de­ter­mined that off­shore wind was our best bet.

And so, he said an as­sess­ment will be un­der­tak­en to de­ter­mine the best lo­ca­tions for wind farms.

“On No­vem­ber 29, 2022, the Gov­ern­ment launched the Roadmap for a Green Econ­o­my in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The Roadmap was de­vel­oped by the IDB in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries and Na­tion­al En­er­gy. The study de­ter­mined that of all the po­ten­tial re­new­able en­er­gy sources in Trinidad and To­ba­go, off­shore wind of­fers the largest po­ten­tial for the coun­try with a pro­ject­ed out­put of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 gi­gawatts of lev­elised en­er­gy. The ini­tial goal of the roadmap is the es­tab­lish­ment of a wind pi­lot project, demon­strat­ing vis­i­ble end-use ap­pli­ca­tions of green hy­dro­gen in Trinidad and To­ba­go. To­wards this end, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Na­tion­al En­er­gy and the Eu­ro­pean Union, will be con­duct­ing a Na­tion­al Wind Re­source As­sess­ment to iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial sites for wind farm de­vel­op­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” the PM said.

He al­so con­firmed that the con­struc­tion of so­lar parks will be­gin ear­ly this year, as the coun­try starts its pro­gres­sion to re­new­able en­er­gy.

“Con­struc­tion of the so­lar parks is sched­uled to com­mence in the first quar­ter 2023, with full op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the project by fourth quar­ter 2024. The So­lar Util­i­ty Project will, on com­ple­tion, meet 8% of the coun­try’s pow­er gen­er­a­tion re­quire­ments,” the Row­ley said.

“It is the Gov­ern­ment’s stat­ed ob­jec­tive to in­crease pow­er from re­new­ables to meet 30% of the coun­try’s re­quire­ments.”

He, how­ev­er, said that this project had been chal­lenged by sup­ply chain is­sues which in­creased costs for the planned con­struc­tion.

De­spite this move to­wards re­new­able en­er­gy, Row­ley ex­plained that the coun­try will con­tin­ue to ride the pos­i­tive mo­men­tum the en­er­gy sec­tor is en­joy­ing with the suc­cess of the re­cent­ly com­plet­ed on­shore and nearshore bid round an en­cour­ag­ing sign.

“The 2022 On­shore and Nearshore Com­pet­i­tive Bid Round, which opened on Ju­ly 8th, 2022 and closed on Jan­u­ary 9th, 2023, we re­ceived six­teen bids for eight of the eleven blocks that were of­fered. It is the most suc­cess­ful On­shore/Nearshore Bid-Round to date, sur­pass­ing the On­shore/Nearshore El­e­ment of the 2005/2006 Bid Round in which eight bids were sub­mit­ted for six of the eight blocks of­fered,” Row­ley said.

He added that this bid round will be fol­lowed by a shal­low-wa­ter bid-round sched­uled to be opened at the end of the first quar­ter 2023.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so point­ed to pos­i­tive moves by Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, as he stressed that it was im­por­tant to con­sol­i­date our en­er­gy gains.

“The out­look in the near term is pos­i­tive giv­en the ag­gres­sive drilling pro­gramme of Her­itage, the coun­try’s largest oil pro­duc­er, new pro­duc­tion by EOG and Trin­i­ty, re­cent dis­cov­er­ies by Touch­stone and the gen­er­ous fis­cal in­cen­tives made avail­able to on­shore pro­duc­ers and shal­low wa­ter ma­rine ar­eas in re­cent times. We have been work­ing tire­less­ly to en­cour­age fur­ther in­creased on­shore oil pro­duc­tion and I hope to see suc­cess in this area as time pro­gress­es,” he said.

The Prime Min­is­ter said it was cru­cial to cap­i­talise on this progress amid less-than-pos­i­tive pro­jec­tions from in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies.

He said, “A key con­cern raised by the World Bank is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of high glob­al in­fla­tion ac­com­pa­nied by slow growth, rem­i­nis­cent of the stagfla­tion of the 1970s. This, ac­cord­ing to the World Bank, could re­sult in a sharp tight­en­ing of mon­e­tary pol­i­cy in ad­vanced economies, which could have po­ten­tial­ly harm­ful con­se­quences on high­ly in­debt­ed de­vel­op­ing and emerg­ing mar­kets. There­fore, Gov­ern­ment and busi­ness must work to­geth­er to de­vel­op strate­gies to en­sure that the pur­suit of crit­i­cal en­er­gy goals re­mains on track. This is even more im­por­tant to en­er­gy-dri­ven coun­tries such as ours.”