JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, April 27, 2025

Where next for energy workers?

by

Ryan Bachoo
938 days ago
20221002
Ministry of Planning and Development Head, Multilateral Environmental Agreements Unit Kishan Kumarsingh at his Port-of-Spain office.

Ministry of Planning and Development Head, Multilateral Environmental Agreements Unit Kishan Kumarsingh at his Port-of-Spain office.

SHIRLEY. BAHADUR

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

For much of 50 years, Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) has built a coun­try and its peo­ple on the for­tunes of fos­sil fu­els. And though alarm bells have been sound­ing for some decades now that the world must move to a more sus­tain­able fu­ture, life on the is­land of Trinidad is per­haps dif­fi­cult to imag­ine with­out an econ­o­my that de­pends on oil and gas.

In re­cent years, those alarm bells have got­ten loud­er. This may be due in some part to the dig­i­tal era am­pli­fy­ing the voic­es of con­cern about cli­mate change, but the sta­tis­tics of a warm­ing plan­et are fright­en­ing as they are con­cern­ing.

Just last week, the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) ob­served coral bleach­ing in Char­lot­teville, To­ba­go. This is caused by glob­al warm­ing. Fur­ther to that, the weath­er in T&T has be­come more un­pre­dictable with the two ex­tremes; vi­o­lent trop­i­cal sys­tems or un­bear­able heat.

Yet, in a world that is slow­ly dis­tanc­ing it­self from non-re­new­able sources, mov­ing T&T’s car­bon-in­ten­sive econ­o­my which is large­ly based on oil and gas, petro­chem­i­cals and man­u­fac­tur­ing seem like a Her­culean task. Why? Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO), by the end of the first quar­ter of 2022, the pe­tro­le­um and gas in­dus­try, in­clud­ing pro­duc­tion, re­fin­ing and ser­vice con­trac­tors em­ployed 10,600 peo­ple. And while the en­er­gy in­dus­tries tend to make the head­lines in T&T, cli­mate change will af­fect oth­er sec­tors in­clud­ing agri­cul­ture and fish­eries. Those sec­tors em­ploy 24,300 peo­ple ac­cord­ing to the CSO.

“What it could mean for us as we em­bark with the world on the en­er­gy tran­si­tion low car­bon de­vel­op­ment, as we dis­place those car­bon pol­lut­ing in­dus­tries with clean­er tech­nol­o­gy, there may be re­dun­dan­cy, there may be so­cial fall­outs be­cause of the new job re­quire­ments,” Kis­han Ku­mars­ingh ex­plained. He is the head of the Mul­ti­lat­er­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Agree­ments Unit of the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment and T&T’s lead cli­mate ne­go­tia­tor for the last 24 years and al­so lead­ing on cli­mate pol­i­cy in T&T.

Ku­mars­ingh fur­ther ex­plained how coastal com­mu­ni­ties which re­ly on the nat­ur­al ameni­ties that they live in like those who catch and sell fish, crabs and conchs will be af­fect­ed and how they fall un­der the pro­tec­tion of the just tran­si­tion pol­i­cy.

He stat­ed, “If the wa­ter regime for conchs and cas­cadoo changes then it af­fects the pop­u­la­tion of these species. What that would mean is that the peo­ple who de­pend on these sources of liveli­hood would be im­pact­ed be­cause then you have few­er re­sources to work with, and there­fore, they would be dis­en­fran­chised from self-em­ploy­ment in this case, and they have to be catered for from a just tran­si­tion per­spec­tive be­cause just tran­si­tion caters for the erad­i­ca­tion of pover­ty and the cre­ation of de­cent jobs for all.”

To cush­ion such fall­outs, trade union­ists in the 90s coined a phrase called “just tran­si­tion.” It was cre­at­ed to pro­tect the rights of work­ers whose jobs may be im­pact­ed by en­vi­ron­men­tal poli­cies while al­so cre­at­ing de­cent jobs as economies tran­si­tion to a low-car­bon fu­ture.

Last Sep­tem­ber, the Gov­ern­ment pub­lished a draft just tran­si­tion pol­i­cy for this coun­try which is cur­rent­ly be­fore the Cab­i­net.

Ku­mars­ingh ex­plained to the Sun­day Guardian why, though there will be op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­tool­ing and reschool­ing in the tran­si­tion, it is mov­ing slow­ly.

He said, “What you have to now do is cre­ate the job mar­ket for it and that is where catalysing the tran­si­tion would help in cre­at­ing the de­mand for these jobs and pro­vid­ing the skills that would be nec­es­sary for the fu­ture… Al­so, what needs to hap­pen...there needs to be a recog­ni­tion of the pri­vate sec­tor and its role in the en­er­gy tran­si­tion and clean tech­nol­o­gy tran­si­tion. Every set of ac­tors has a role to play in dif­fer­ent as­pects to catal­yse that tran­si­tion.”

It is a point Mark Lo­quan, pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, fur­thered. He be­lieves T&T must cap­i­talise on the re­gion when it comes to green jobs with var­i­ous so­lar and wind projects tak­ing place around the Caribbean.

As the pres­i­dent of an en­er­gy com­pa­ny, Lo­quan is all too fa­mil­iar with com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ments’ virtue sig­nalling with­out any re­al in­ten­tion to low­er their car­bon foot­print, but he feels this will not last.

He told the Sun­day Guardian, “To avoid this sit­u­a­tion where I say I’m do­ing some­thing but you don’t ac­tu­al­ly see, you re­al­ly need to have the mea­sure­ment and re­port­ing com­ing in on an ag­gre­gate ba­sis. T&T will face this is­sue. When you go to COP27, COP28, COP29, etc, it’s not good enough to say you’re pledg­ing or this is your tar­get but it would ac­tu­al­ly mean you would have to have it peer re­viewed and in some cas­es cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

Lo­quan ad­mit­ted the path to­ward just tran­si­tion for a coun­try like T&T that is de­pen­dent on the pro­duc­tion and sale of oil and gas is a tricky one.

“The chal­lenges will be not on­ly cul­tur­al change and changes in these ar­eas of poli­cies and frame­works, but I think it is al­so mon­ey,” he said.

“Mon­ey will be re­quired to ef­fect some of these things. In­fra­struc­ture will be re­quired, like if you’re go­ing to elec­tric ve­hi­cles, you may have the pol­i­cy, but you still need the in­fra­struc­ture.

“The chal­lenge will be to align our­selves in dif­fer­ent time frames. You have to work on all of these things at the same time but what is in front of us is en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy.”

Pres­i­dent of the T&T En­er­gy Cham­ber, Dr Thack­wray Dri­ver feels work­ers who have to tran­si­tion from the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor to green­er jobs will find that their skill set is not out­dat­ed. He stat­ed, “I think a lot of changes we’ve been talk­ing about to de­vel­op a dif­fer­ent type of en­er­gy sys­tem cre­ates jobs in it­self.

“There’s a huge num­ber of jobs that I think can be gen­er­at­ed in things like the in­stal­la­tion of so­lar pan­els in homes, in­stal­la­tion of so­lar wa­ter heaters, and retro­fitting build­ings to make them more en­er­gy ef­fi­cient. These are all ar­eas where I think there are a lot of jobs, and we have a lot of trans­fer­able skills in that area.”

The NGC pres­i­dent is of the view that T&T needs an en­er­gy roadmap be­cause the changes that are re­quired will not be achieved “next week or next year.”

In­stead, Lo­quan said, in the short-to-medi­um term, the fo­cus ar­eas that need to be looked at like pow­er and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy can be pri­ori­tised while oth­er as­pects which are longer term will al­so be on the radar.

Change is al­ways dif­fi­cult, es­pe­cial­ly when chang­ing from a for­mu­la that has brought so much wealth and for­tune to this coun­try down the decades but Ku­mars­ingh is adamant that it is im­per­a­tive, op­ti­misti­cal­ly say­ing, “The en­er­gy tran­si­tion is a glob­al par­a­digm shift and T&T as part of the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty has to be on board oth­er­wise, we risk be­ing left be­hind. It will be chal­leng­ing, but it’s noth­ing to be afraid of.”

Energy


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored