If the Caribbean Region is to address the challenge of climate change, we need to both “go faster and go bolder”, to borrow from a recent statement from Ben van Beurden, the Chief Executive of Shell. We simply do not have time to waste, and it is imperative that we act now and act quickly.
The Energy Chamber is confident that the region can indeed make the bold changes that are needed and create a sustainable future for the Caribbean. The challenge is daunting, but the region has taken on big challenges in the past and has shown that this remarkable set of small nations can be world leaders. We need to be bold, and we need to act fast.
Two years ago, when the pandemic struck, everybody across society had to adapt and to do things differently; but people did indeed adapt and did so quickly.
Adapting to the challenges brought about by climate change is going to involve much bigger and more permanent adjustments.
• It involves the wholesale reorientation of the energy systems which have literally built the modern world.
• It is going to need trillions of dollars of new capital investment and new technologies and innovations that, in some cases, do not yet exist.
• It is going to need new policies, new fiscal instruments, and new relationships between the public and private sector.
• It is going to need a simultaneous focus on both mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and ensuring that we adapt to climate change and protect vulnerable people and communities, a key issue in the Caribbean, with our exposure to hurricanes and sea level rise.
• We are also going to need to focus on justice, so that the cost of change is not borne by those least able to bear the burden.
These are all tough and complex things to do, but at the recently concluded Caribbean Sustainable Energy Conference, we were presented with many interesting and innovative approaches to how these complex problems could be solved.
There is innovation going on in the region and there are clearly many people—in government, in the private sector, in academia and in NGOs—who are focussed on the issue of climate change, decarbonisation and the energy transition. More collaboration and sharing will certainly help, but there are plenty of good ideas and capital is available to implement many of these ideas. Financing will always be a challenge, but again there are many ideas out there to access new sources of capital from many different sources.
And in the end, just like with the pandemic, we have no choice. The cost of inaction is just too high.
The Energy Chamber of Trinidad & Tobago would like to challenge the entire Caribbean region and all sectors of society—ourselves included—to rise to the challenge posed by climate change and to grasp the opportunities that arise as we decarbonise our energy systems. We all need to commit to join in the quest to “go faster and go bolder”.