Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Last week at COP29 there was a ris­ing tide of voic­es call­ing for a de­car­bon­i­sa­tion of the ship­ping in­dus­try. On Wednes­day, more than 50 lead­ers across the spec­trum of the ship­ping val­ue chain, in­clud­ing e-fu­el pro­duc­ers, ves­sel and car­go own­ers, ports, and equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers, signed a call to ac­tion to ac­cel­er­ate the adop­tion of ze­ro-emis­sion fu­els. The ship­ping in­dus­try ac­counts for three per cent of an­nu­al green­house gas emis­sions.

There are con­se­quences for T&T and the Caribbean from the tan­gi­ble to the un­fore­seen. That in­cludes the cruise ships that vis­it Caribbean shores every sea­son and Ama­zon prod­ucts or­dered on­line and ul­ti­mate­ly shipped to their des­ti­na­tion.

The call to ac­tion was or­gan­ised by Rocky Moun­tain In­sti­tute (RMI), the UN Cli­mate Change High-Lev­el Cham­pi­ons, the Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Lon­don’s En­er­gy In­sti­tute, and the Unit­ed Na­tions Foun­da­tion. It isn’t the first call, of course. It is the third. How­ev­er, this year has had a 76 per cent in­crease in the num­ber of sig­na­to­ries com­pared to last year. The In­ter­na­tion­al Mar­itime Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IMO) has a goal of net-ze­ro emis­sions from glob­al ship­ping by 2050 and is putting mea­sures in place in April next year.

The Ma­rine En­vi­ron­ment Pro­tec­tion Com­mit­tee is set to host a mile­stone con­ven­ing in 2025 where glob­al reg­u­la­to­ry ar­chi­tec­ture will be set for a glob­al fu­el stan­dard and a green­house gas pric­ing mech­a­nism to achieve the IMO’s 2050 tar­get.

Ac­cord­ing to a press re­lease: “The joint state­ment calls for faster and bold­er ac­tion to in­crease ze­ro and near-ze­ro emis­sions fu­el up­take, in­vest­ment in ze­ro-emis­sions ves­sels, and glob­al de­vel­op­ment of green hy­dro­gen in­fra­struc­ture, leav­ing no coun­try be­hind.”

The lat­ter part of the state­ment is crit­i­cal. If the ship­ping in­dus­try has its way of mov­ing to green­er forms of fu­el, there are se­ri­ous op­por­tu­ni­ties and reper­cus­sions for na­tions like T&T.

T&T’s Philip Julien was one of the stake­hold­ers who at­tend­ed and spoke at the call to ac­tion in Baku last week. He has be­come the face of green hy­dro­gen in the re­gion since es­tab­lish­ing Ke­nes­jay Green, a Caribbean-grown, green en­er­gy project en­gi­neer­ing and de­vel­op­ment firm.

A day af­ter the call to ac­tion, he sat down with the Sun­day Guardian in Azer­bai­jan to ex­plain the threats and op­por­tu­ni­ties such a move could have on a coun­try like T&T.

“If cruise lin­ers are man­dat­ed that they must run on green fu­el and the des­ti­na­tions they’d like to go to are not able to pro­vide the green fu­el then they may have no choice but to go to oth­er des­ti­na­tions,” he ex­plained.

Julien said it’s a ques­tion of the Caribbean re­main­ing rel­e­vant to “this im­mi­nent and un­stop­pable en­er­gy tran­si­tion that’s up­on us.” He added that the re­gion has an op­por­tu­ni­ty to stay in front of this on­com­ing glob­al shift.

An­oth­er T&T na­tion­al, Siana Teelucks­ingh, who serves as a man­ag­er of RMI’s Hy­dro­gen Team, agreed there are op­por­tu­ni­ties for this coun­try to take ad­van­tage of as the ship­ping in­dus­try en­ters un­chart­ed wa­ters.

She said: “Trinidad is a coun­try with in­cred­i­ble re­new­able en­er­gy re­sources, a large in­dus­tri­al sec­tor, and ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al ports. This means that these up­com­ing IMO reg­u­la­tions cre­ate a sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ty for build­ing up re­new­able en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture, which can be utilised to pro­duce green am­mo­nia and green methanol. These fu­els can be sold to ships which dock at our ports. This is a sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ty to gen­er­ate green fu­els which are in high de­mand and can earn much-need­ed for­eign ex­change for the T&T econ­o­my.”

Julien added: “There is a sig­nif­i­cant deficit of hy­dro­gen in the cur­rent in­fra­struc­ture of T&T’s am­mo­nia and methanol pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ties at Pt Lisas. If there is a strong push for green fu­el, that means green am­mo­nia and green methanol be­come a very com­mer­cial­ly vi­able and at­trac­tive op­por­tu­ni­ty for the Pt Lisas fa­cil­i­ties to be­come a provider of that type of ship­ping fu­el which will then dri­ve a strong re­new­able en­er­gy in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty to the shores of T&T in or­der to gen­er­ate enough hy­dro­gen to feed the am­mo­nia and methanol plants.

“This is in sup­port of the green hy­dro­gen road map de­vel­oped through the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion, which speaks pow­er­ful­ly to this op­por­tu­ni­ty, with a par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on the off­shore wind pos­si­bil­i­ty for the coun­try.”

He said this will cre­ate a sig­nif­i­cant busi­ness sup­ply chain that will dri­ve an in­vest­ment case to the shores of T&T that could feed the ship­ping in­dus­try.

The joint state­ment not­ed that to align with a 1.5°C path­way, glob­al green hy­dro­gen pro­duc­tion must dou­ble by 2030, trans­lat­ing to the up­take of at least 5 mil­lion tonnes of green hy­dro­gen in the ship­ping sec­tor.

This is where ex­perts be­lieve T&T can play a ma­jor role in this part of the world.

To mit­i­gate the chal­lenge of de­mand, Teelucks­ingh said col­lab­o­ra­tion is key to de­vel­op­ing ro­bust and re­li­able green fu­el sup­ply chains.

She ex­plained: “A typ­i­cal chal­lenge in the en­er­gy tran­si­tion is the chick­en and egg prob­lem where the sup­ply-side is hes­i­tant to in­vest un­til there is de­mand and vice ver­sa. To mit­i­gate this, we have brought to­geth­er e-fu­el pro­duc­ers, ship own­ers, car­go own­ers and ports to co-cre­ate this call to ac­tion. This sym­bol­is­es that stake­hold­ers across the en­tire ecosys­tem are ready to in­vest in what’s need­ed for glob­al ship­ping to achieve its net ze­ro tar­gets.”

Julien said it is al­so im­per­a­tive that the Caribbean take this glob­al par­a­digm shift se­ri­ous­ly as it can have an out­sized ef­fect on cruise ship sea­son which is so crit­i­cal to many economies around the re­gion.

He added: “If those ship­ping lines have to run on a green fu­el the more ports of call they have in the Caribbean, the bet­ter, be­cause then there’s less of a risk of the ship­ments not com­ing in time be­cause there are lim­it­ed ports of call to re­fu­el.”

He point­ed to Do­mini­ca with a green eco-in­dus­tri­al park vi­sion in the north­west of the coun­try that would con­vert their ge­ot­her­mal re­sources to green hy­dro­gen and its de­riv­a­tives, in­clud­ing green am­mo­nia. One pos­si­ble mar­ket Do­mini­ca is look­ing at for its green am­mo­nia, he said, is the mar­itime ship­ping in­dus­try.

While ex­perts are op­ti­mistic that the mar­itime in­dus­try can en­ter this new green ter­ri­to­ry, the seas are not ex­pect­ed to be smooth for the roll­out of this de­cree of e-fu­els to pow­er ships across the world’s wa­ters. How­ev­er, Teelucks­ingh sees op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“Ship­ping is cru­cial in glob­al trade and de­mand for ocean freight is on­ly ex­pect­ed to in­crease in the fu­ture. Ships cur­rent­ly use bunker fu­el which is one of the low­est fu­el grades and is very pol­lut­ing. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, ship­ping is a cross-bor­der in­dus­try, which makes reg­u­la­tion by any sin­gle na­tion dif­fi­cult, and in some cas­es, in­creased reg­u­la­tion to re­duce emis­sions in one ju­ris­dic­tion can make some ports more ex­pen­sive com­pared to near­by ports.

“These up­com­ing glob­al reg­u­la­tions are ground­break­ing. They will cre­ate a lev­elled play­ing field for ze­ro and near-ze­ro emis­sion ship­ping fu­els. Not on­ly is this a pos­i­tive step for ship­ping, it is a mas­sive op­por­tu­ni­ty for the re­new­able en­er­gy in­dus­try,” she said.

What­ev­er con­cerns na­tions may have about the on­com­ing reg­u­la­tions, the IMO looks set to pow­er for­ward with its green e-fu­el man­date next year no mat­ter the con­di­tions of the seas ahead.