A detailed, European Union-funded, expert report was delivered to the Government of Trinidad and Tobago in May 2023, that outlined a pathway to enable wind-energy generation in the country. The report outlined in detail the steps that need to be taken to deliver 2 gigawatts (GW) of installed wind capacity by 2035, using both onshore and offshore wind locations. The report provides an excellent strategic plan to move forward with the development of wind energy, including all the policy, regulatory, and legislative changes that are required to move this initiative forward.
The strategy outlined in the report builds on the work managed by National Energy, along with Inter- American Development Bank funding, on the development of green hydrogen in Trinidad and Tobago.
The country’s first major renewable energy project—just beginning construction—is going to be a solar plant, and there is scope for more solar to be brought onto the grid (both large utility-scale projects and small rooftop solar installations). But land availability is always going to be a constraining factor for solar on a small island state like Trinidad, especially given the volumes of electricity that are required to run our highly industrialised economy.
This is where wind power has a crucial role to play, especially offshore wind, in creating a sustainable future for the petrochemical industry in Trinidad and Tobago.
Developing wind power will allow us to divert natural gas from electricity generation to the petrochemical sector and the LNG export sector. Both industries have suffered from shortfalls in gas delivery for many years now. In addition to efforts to drill and develop more gas upstream (or import it from Venezuela), there are also opportunities to decrease the roughly 10% of natural gas production that currently goes into electricity generation and make this available to these foreign exchange earning sectors.
In addition to delivering more natural gas to the petrochemical sector, the advent of large volumes of renewable electricity from wind could also displace natural gas as feedstock for the petrochemical industry (especially ammonia). What the ammonia industry requires is hydrogen and this is currently delivered to the plants from splitting methane molecules, which produces hydrogen for the ammonia production and carbon dioxide as a by-product (much of which is vented into the atmosphere, though some is captured and used in other industries from methanol through to beer).
Clean sources of electricity can be used to produce green hydrogen, split from water molecules rather than methane, that can be fed into the ammonia plants. This will both provide a new sustainable source of hydrogen and also reduce the carbon footprint of the commodities. This second point is important as new import “carbon border adjustment mechanisms” in the European Union will apply tariffs based on the carbon intensity of imported select commodities, including ammonia.
Wind-powered electricity generation will be important for the future of the Trinidad and Tobago energy sector. The recent report provides a good roadmap that the country should follow to bring wind power into the mix. We should urgently begin navigating down that pathway. There is no time to lose.