As a small is­land de­vel­op­ing state (SID) and net en­er­gy ex­porter, Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) has a unique po­si­tion in the glob­al en­er­gy tran­si­tion and cli­mate change space. The coun­try has sev­er­al op­por­tu­ni­ties to play an im­por­tant role both re­gion­al­ly and glob­al­ly through da­ta dis­clo­sures and project im­ple­men­ta­tion. But, there are al­so chal­lenges to over­come. With nat­ur­al gas tout­ed as the gate­way fu­el for the tran­si­tion, the coun­try has the twin chal­lenge of pro­duc­ing more gas to serve its do­mes­tic petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try and ex­port­ing LNG to its glob­al clien­tele.

Al­so, as an en­er­gy-in­ten­sive SID, liv­ing up to glob­al com­mit­ments on re­duc­ing green­house gas emis­sions ties in­to the coun­try’s own green econ­o­my poli­cies, reg­u­la­tions and pro­ce­dures.

T&T has al­ready com­mit­ted, through the Paris Cli­mate Change agree­ment, to re­duce its in­dus­tri­al, pow­er gen­er­a­tion and trans­port sec­tor emis­sions by 15 per cent by 2030.

In ab­solute terms, this means re­duc­ing cu­mu­la­tive emis­sions by 103 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 equiv­a­lent (Mt­CO2e), in­clu­sive of emis­sions from the in­dus­try sec­tor of 72 Mt­CO2e. As at 2018, it was re­port­ed that to­tal GHG emis­sions in T&T amount­ed to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 45 Mt­CO2e; of which 60 per cent were at­trib­ut­able to the in­dus­try sec­tor. Giv­en these tar­gets and our unique po­si­tion, cap­tur­ing da­ta on en­vi­ron­men­tal in­di­ca­tors makes sense. Apart from our oth­er oblig­a­tions, the Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive al­so man­dates par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries to dis­close a host of en­vi­ron­men­tal in­di­ca­tors such as so­cial and en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact as­sess­ments, reg­u­la­to­ry and mon­i­tor­ing frame­works and emis­sions dis­clo­sures.

T&T is an EITI im­ple­ment­ing coun­try and the TTEITI Steer­ing Com­mit­tee (SC) has al­so tak­en an ac­tive role in en­sur­ing in­for­ma­tion on emis­sions and oth­er en­vi­ron­men­tal in­di­ca­tors are in the pub­lic do­main.

As part of an en­vi­ron­men­tal re­port­ing pi­lot project, the SC re­quest­ed com­pa­nies share more de­tailed dis­clo­sure of en­vi­ron­men­tal in­di­ca­tors. The SC re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion on scope 1 GHG emis­sions (co2, methane etc); re­source/en­er­gy use (wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty, oil and nat­ur­al gas con­sump­tion); air and wa­ter pol­lu­tion per­mits; Cer­tifi­cates of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance and En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ments; fines and no­tices of vi­o­la­tions and best man­age­ment prac­tices com­pa­nies used to re­duce car­bon foot­print or im­prove en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy.

In 2022, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T (NGC) was the first com­pa­ny to par­tic­i­pate in the pi­lot project, and they were al­so the first com­pa­ny glob­al­ly to dis­close gran­u­lar emis­sions da­ta with­in the EITI frame­work.

In 2023, Touch­stone al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pi­lot and dis­closed its emis­sions and oth­er da­ta. In 2024, there was a marked in­crease in com­pa­nies par­tic­i­pat­ing.

The com­pa­nies di­vulging en­vi­ron­men­tal in­for­ma­tion for this re­port in­clude: De No­vo, EOG Re­sources, Hy­dro­carb Trinidad Ltd, Her­itage Trinidad Ltd, Her­mitage Lime­stone Ltd, Na­tion­al Quar­ries Com­pa­ny Ltd, NGC, Touch­stone En­er­gy, Trin­i­ty Ex­plo­ration and Colum­bus En­er­gy.

To­tal CO2, methane and ni­trous ox­ide emis­sions for all par­tic­i­pat­ing com­pa­nies were 279,848, 13,398,227 and 19,467 tonnes of CO2 equiv­a­lent re­spec­tive­ly.

Par­tic­i­pat­ing com­pa­nies al­so high­light­ed sev­er­al steps tak­en to off­set emis­sions and im­prove op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy in­clud­ing:

• Vent gas ver­i­fi­ca­tion and op­ti­mi­sa­tion pro­grammes;

• Em­bed­ding sus­tain­abil­i­ty cri­te­ria in­to sup­ply chain man­age­ment;

• Re­search and de­vel­op­ment projects on blue methanol and car­bon cap­ture and stor­age tech­nolo­gies;

• Re­for­esta­tion ini­tia­tives;

• In­creased pipeline in­spec­tions, leak de­tec­tion and re­pair;

• Up­grad­ing of GHG cal­cu­la­tors to im­prove cap­ture of mea­sured vent­ed and fugi­tive da­ta;

• In­tro­duc­ing so­lar light­ing and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy train­ing

This in­for­ma­tion, from the re­port, was al­ready shared with the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) and com­ple­ments the EMA’s Na­tion­al Trans­paren­cy Sys­tem (NTS). This sys­tem is a da­ta man­age­ment and re­port­ing plat­form aimed at mon­i­tor­ing, analysing, and re­port­ing on key in­di­ca­tors linked to the coun­try’s cli­mate ac­tion strate­gies and tar­gets of the Paris agree­ment Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tion tar­gets.

Ac­cord­ing to the EMA, “The tool care­ful­ly tracks im­prove­ments in key ar­eas like elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion, trans­port, and man­u­fac­tur­ing. It looks at how green­house gas emis­sions are be­ing re­duced, how much less elec­tric­i­ty is be­ing used, and how much re­new­able en­er­gy is be­ing brought in­to the over­all en­er­gy mix. It al­so checks how the whole econ­o­my us­es en­er­gy and how aware the pub­lic is about sav­ing en­er­gy and us­ing re­new­able sources.

“The adap­ta­tion in­di­ca­tors cov­er both mea­sur­able and de­scrip­tive as­pects, eval­u­at­ing how well we are adapt­ing in var­i­ous fields, from agri­cul­ture da­ta to the cre­ation of new poli­cies. This sys­tem is built to un­der­stand how dif­fer­ent sec­tors work to­geth­er, pro­vid­ing a com­plete frame­work for ad­dress­ing cli­mate is­sues.”

This da­ta is a path­way to re­form.

The im­pact of cli­mate change for the coun­try is vis­cer­al giv­en chang­ing weath­er pat­terns and greater fo­cus glob­al­ly on the en­er­gy tran­si­tion. The speed of this tran­si­tion will im­pact fu­ture en­er­gy com­mod­i­ty prices and our pro­duc­tion out­look. Da­ta on en­vi­ron­men­tal in­di­ca­tors is crit­i­cal to de­sign­ing the right leg­isla­tive and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for both cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion and adap­ta­tion.

This da­ta will help us as­sess whether we are ful­fill­ing our cli­mate oblig­a­tions. The TTEITI will al­so con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing in­for­ma­tion to en­able pub­lic un­der­stand­ing of ex­trac­tive com­pa­nies’ so­cial and en­vi­ron­men­tal con­tri­bu­tions and dis­close the rel­e­vant le­gal pro­vi­sions and ad­min­is­tra­tive rules gov­ern­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal and so­cial im­pact man­age­ment and mon­i­tor­ing in the ex­trac­tive sec­tor.

The coun­try’s sta­tus as an en­er­gy in­ten­sive SID de­mands we con­tin­ue to fo­cus on analysing trends in these in­di­ca­tors to as­sess where we stand and our re­sponse to con­tin­u­ing cli­mate change chal­lenges.

BOX – T&T’s ini­tia­tives on NDC tar­gets

Ac­cord­ing to the coun­try’s Third Na­tion­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC) sev­er­al ini­tia­tives have com­menced to help the coun­try meet its tar­gets.

These in­clude:

• The de­vel­op­ment of a mon­i­tor­ing, re­port­ing and ver­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem for track­ing na­tion­al green­house gas emis­sions and a fore­cast­ing mod­el to project emis­sions to 2050;

• The de­vel­op­ment of an in­te­grat­ed re­source and re­silience plan which fo­cus­es on ex­pan­sion plan­ning and cli­mate and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty as­sess­ments;

• The de­vel­op­ment of a feed-in tar­iff;

• An up­date of the Na­tion­al Cli­mate Change Pol­i­cy to align with the Paris ac­cord tar­gets;

• The de­vel­op­ment and de­ploy­ment of a just tran­si­tion work­force pol­i­cy to ad­dress any so­cio-eco­nom­ic is­sues

Vis­it http://www.tteiti.com/www.tteiti.com for more in­for­ma­tion on en­vi­ron­men­tal and oth­er dis­clo­sures.