I was very pleased and a bit surprised to hear about the “light bulb swap” project announced in the Minister of Finance’s national budget speech. The reason I was surprised was that Minister Imbert had seemed rather sceptical about the idea when I presented it to him, and other members of the National Tripartite Advisory Council, in a pre-budget consultation session. I guess his opinion might have been swayed when the economic data supporting the idea was presented as part of the National Energy Efficiency Committee’s report submitted to the Minister of Public Utilities.
While this proposal ended up being the subject of a lot of political picong, it is actually a very sensible suggestion and a project that has been implemented with good effect in many countries.
Lighting is a major use of electricity in the commercial and residential building sectors (along with air conditioning) and swapping out older incandescent and compact fluorescent bulbs for LEDs is an easy and cost-effective method for reducing energy use and electricity bills. Many businesses have already upgraded their lighting systems to LEDs and implemented energy management programmes to reduce their electricity costs. The winner of the Energy Chamber’s 2019 Award for the Best Greenhouse Gas Reduction project went to one of our member companies, IT Energy Management (ITEM), for an energy management project they did for the Guardian Group’s flagship office in Westmoorings, including room sensors that turn off lights whenever a room is not occupied.
The light bulb swapping programme is a great way to assist ordinary citizens in making the shift to LED lighting and will be a good demonstration and public awareness exercise. It is important to understand, however, that it is just one small element of an overall plan to reduce electricity consumption and improve efficiency.
Just this week, the Minister of Public Utilities announced another element of the overall plan, namely, the introduction of an energy conservation and energy efficiency plan in Tower C of the Waterfront development in Port of Spain. This plan has been developed based on an audit conducted by Energy Dynamics, one of our member companies, and it is intended to be a pilot project to subsequently be rolled out across all government buildings.
The Energy Chamber was a member of the National Energy Efficiency Committee and we have continued to advocate hard for the implementation of energy conservation and efficiency measures in the country. The Energy Chamber sees energy conservation (changing behaviours) and energy efficiency (upgrading equipment and management systems) as two very low hanging fruit for reducing Trinidad and Tobago’s carbon footprint.
While changing behaviours of ordinary citizens is important, the biggest gains can be made in the power generation, industrial and transport sectors. Making changes in these sectors will often require changes to government policy, contractual relationships and regulations, but there is also a lot that can be done through changes in individual company decision-making.
Last year, the Energy Chamber introduced an Energy Efficiency Declaration and invited our members to sign-up to commit to improving their energy efficiency. Over 60 companies have since signed the declaration, including most of the major energy sector companies but also many small to medium-sized businesses. We will be asking these companies to report on the actions that they have taken so that we can put together a report to be released at our Energy Efficiency and Renewables Conference in June.
I am already seeing a significant shift in behaviours amongst our membership, and a genuine commitment to becoming more energy efficient. At our recent Local Content Forum, one of the topics for discussion was how service companies and contractors could help the major operators reduce their carbon footprint. We heard from two of our local service company members about the actions they have taken to improve their energy efficiency: Dumore reported on how they had shifted their vehicle fleet to CNG and Delta Logistics reported on how their new platform supply vessels incorporated electric motors.
These activities and policies are all good, but the reality is that we need to do far more in Trinidad and Tobago if we are to meet our global obligations. We have made international commitments to reduce our carbon emissions and it is vital that we live up to those commitments. The light bulb swapping programme might have given the Trinidad and Tobago meme-makers a few days of fun but reducing our energy consumption and our carbon footprint is not a laughing matter.