For all 64 years of this coun­try’s time as an In­de­pen­dent na­tion, the oil and gas sec­tor has been the back­bone of T&T’s econ­o­my.

How­ev­er, the fields of study cho­sen by the two re­cip­i­ents of the Chevening Schol­ar­ships to pur­sue mas­ter’s de­grees in the Unit­ed King­dom are con­nect­ed to the ar­eas of cli­mate change pol­i­cy and sus­tain­able en­er­gy sys­tems.

Both stressed the need for tran­si­tion in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

The schol­ars are Teni­ka Grif­fith from Point Fortin and Kaveer Phillip, from Las Lo­mas. They have al­ready made strides in ad­dress­ing cli­mate change and en­er­gy tran­si­tion in their own way.

How­ev­er, they hope the ad­di­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion they re­ceive in the UK will fur­ther equip them with the tools to dri­ve this change.

Grif­fith will pur­sue an MSc in Cli­mate Change Sci­ence and Pol­i­cy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol. In an in­ter­view with Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian at the British High Com­mis­sion­er’s Res­i­dence in Mar­aval last week, she ex­plained the con­nec­tion be­tween en­vi­ron­men­tal crime and cli­mate change, while em­pha­sis­ing the crit­i­cal role of pol­i­cy im­ple­men­ta­tion and har­mon­i­sa­tion across the Cari­com re­gion.

“I have al­ways been pas­sion­ate about the en­vi­ron­ment and cur­rent­ly I work as an en­vi­ron­men­tal crime an­a­lyst at Cari­com’s Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty, where we mon­i­tor, track and iden­ti­fy trends of en­vi­ron­men­tal crime across the re­gion. I be­lieve that mak­ing that con­nec­tion be­tween en­vi­ron­men­tal crime and cli­mate change is im­por­tant and the pol­i­cy as­pect is es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant be­cause Cari­com is now work­ing on pol­i­cy im­ple­men­ta­tion across the re­gion for bet­ter har­mon­i­sa­tion,” said Grif­fith, of Techi­er Vil­lage in the South West Bor­ough.

Grif­fith has not­ed that while track­ing eco­log­i­cal da­ta is vi­tal, it is in­suf­fi­cient with­out those poli­cies in place.

“So, in my unit cur­rent­ly, we fo­cus on analy­sis and mon­i­tor­ing. I think the pol­i­cy as­pect of this pro­gramme is very im­por­tant be­cause we shouldn’t on­ly be able to mon­i­tor and re­port on the trends. We should al­so be able to sit as a unit and come up with poli­cies to tack­le these is­sues, as well as build­ing ca­pac­i­ty and aware­ness across the re­gion be­cause it still is some­thing that is not heav­i­ly scru­ti­nised in our re­gion.”

Grif­fith said that while T&T has seen much of its de­vel­op­ment due to fos­sil fu­els, she stressed that en­er­gy tran­si­tion was in the coun­try’s best in­ter­est in the long term.

“So, I know cur­rent­ly there’s this tar­get called net-ze­ro in terms of our car­bon foot­print. Trinidad is very small; how­ev­er, we do have a sig­nif­i­cant car­bon foot­print be­cause of our oil and gas in­dus­try. And I know it’s what pow­ers our coun­try. I don’t want to say sad­ly, be­cause we have gained some of the ben­e­fits. How­ev­er, I think it’s very im­por­tant for us to di­ver­si­fy and move away from non-re­new­able en­er­gy sources, not on­ly be­cause of cli­mate change, but sim­ply be­cause it’s not sus­tain­able long-term,” she said. “So, it not on­ly would ben­e­fit us in terms of not con­tribut­ing to the green­house ef­fect, but it would al­so ben­e­fit in di­ver­si­fy­ing our econ­o­my and cre­at­ing new av­enues for bring­ing rev­enue in­to our coun­try.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, Phillip has iden­ti­fied de­car­bon­i­sa­tion as a ma­jor step in T&T’s fu­ture de­vel­op­ment.

“I re­al­ly want to hone my skills in de­car­bon­i­sa­tion and come back and con­tribute to de­car­bon­i­sa­tion of our en­er­gy sec­tor and part­ner with the cor­po­rates, part­ner with non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions to lead our en­er­gy tran­si­tion,” said Phillip, who is off to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ed­in­burgh to pur­sue an MSc in Sus­tain­able En­er­gy Sys­tems.

“I know Trinidad is his­tor­i­cal­ly a fos­sil fu­el-based econ­o­my. But now more young peo­ple are get­ting ex­cit­ed about sus­tain­able en­er­gy, re­new­able en­er­gy and the en­er­gy tran­si­tion. So a lot of young peo­ple reach out to me. A lot of them are ac­tu­al­ly pur­su­ing chem­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing, pur­su­ing pe­tro­le­um en­gi­neer­ing. But we are see­ing a tran­si­tion of the de­gree (among them) where it’s not just core pe­tro­le­um en­gi­neer­ing or core chem­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing, but how do you tran­si­tion our ex­ist­ing in­dus­try. So, I’m re­al­ly ex­cit­ed to see how it de­vel­ops,” said Phillip.

He said the re­cent dis­cus­sion around the Brechin Cas­tle so­lar plant was among the is­sues he would hope to ad­dress fol­low­ing his re­turn.

“One of my cours­es is ac­tu­al­ly on mi­ni-grids. So, it’s re­al­ly about how do we get sus­tain­able en­er­gy and dis­trib­ute it on­to the grid. So, I know the is­sue with that was that there wasn’t stor­age on site. So, I’m deal­ing with all of that in my course as well,” said Phillip, “So, when I come back here, I re­al­ly want to get in­to mi­ni-grids. How do we pow­er rur­al vil­lages with re­new­able en­er­gy? How do we sup­ple­ment the grid with re­new­able en­er­gy, our elec­tric ve­hi­cles? How do we retro­fit car parks to pro­duce en­er­gy?”

Phillip had been in­vit­ed to a pre­vi­ous Chevening func­tion at the British High Com­mis­sion­er’s res­i­dence in Mar­aval last year, af­ter he won an award from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) at the Green­leaf Awards. While at­tend­ing the re­cep­tion, dis­cus­sions with am­bas­sadors and stake­hold­ers led to him be­ing en­cour­aged to ap­ply.

A year on, he was un­veiled as the sec­ond Chevening Schol­ar to spon­sored by the Pro­man Foun­da­tion with the com­pa­ny’s deputy man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Giselle Thomp­son adding fur­ther de­tails about his jour­ney dur­ing the Chevening re­cep­tion on Thurs­day.

She re­vealed she was among those who spoke with him about pur­su­ing his dream fur­ther.

Thomp­son said, “The truth is that you aren’t en­tire­ly new to the Pro­man fam­i­ly. Kaveer joined our grad­u­ate-in-train­ing pro­gramme in Jan­u­ary 2024, be­fore an op­por­tu­ni­ty took him to the Rocky Moun­tain In­sti­tute in Col­orado, where he worked as an as­so­ciate in car­bon diox­ide re­moval. So per­haps tonight is less of an in­tro­duc­tion and more of a wel­come back.”

Thomp­son said while her com­pa­ny had a long stand­ing con­nec­tion to fos­sil fu­els, she too had recog­nised tran­si­tion was re­quired in T&T.

“Pro­man has been part of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy sec­tor for more than 40 years. In that time, tech­nolo­gies have changed, mar­kets have changed, and the chal­lenges fac­ing our in­dus­try have cer­tain­ly changed. But one thing has re­mained con­stant: progress ul­ti­mate­ly comes down to peo­ple. Peo­ple with the knowl­edge to un­der­stand com­plex prob­lems. Peo­ple with the con­fi­dence to chal­lenge con­ven­tion­al think­ing, and peo­ple with the imag­i­na­tion to seek pos­si­bil­i­ties that the rest of us may not yet see,” said Thomp­son at Thurs­day’s func­tion.

“And that is es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant to­day. The fu­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy sec­tor will re­quire tal­ent­ed young peo­ple who un­der­stand the re­al­i­ties of the in­dus­try we have built, while al­so hav­ing the skills and imag­i­na­tion to help build the more sus­tain­able in­dus­try that must come next.”

Phillip thanked his aunts, Celia and Di­anne Phillip, for push­ing him to pur­sue his dream. As for Grif­fith, she said Techi­er vil­lage had rev­elled in her achieve­ment since she was an­nounced as a Chevening Schol­ar.

The Chevening Schol­ars are re­quired to re­turn to Trinidad and To­ba­go and stay for at least two years af­ter the com­ple­tion of their Mas­ter’s pro­gramme.