There is a lot of po­ten­tial in T&T’s busi­ness sec­tor, and the Unit­ed King­dom is hop­ing to max­imise its reach in both the en­er­gy tran­si­tion as well as promis­ing busi­ness de­vel­op­ment.

Eigh­teen months ago, in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Dr Alan Low­don, a pro­fes­sor at Durham Uni­ver­si­ty’s En­er­gy In­sti­tute in the Unit­ed King­dom and a spe­cial­ist in off­shore wind, not­ed that T&T was well placed to lead the charge to­wards re­new­able en­er­gy in the re­gion.

He said, then, that the coun­try could use its ex­pe­ri­ence with off­shore rigs as a means to ex­plore and ex­pand wind en­er­gy re­sources.

Dr Low­don was once again at this week’s T&T En­er­gy Con­fer­ence 2025 to dis­cuss the fu­ture of T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor as he par­tic­i­pat­ed in a pan­el on day one of the event ti­tled “In­vest­ing in As­set In­tegri­ty”.

In an in­ter­view, he said, “The pan­el was on as­set in­tegri­ty, which ef­fec­tive­ly means keep­ing your as­sets safe and go­ing for as long as you can. What I did was re­flect on the ex­pe­ri­ences that I’ve had in the pow­er gen­er­a­tion, oil, gas and wa­ter sec­tors, and now we’re ob­vi­ous­ly in re­new­ables, and look at the syn­er­gies be­tween what the oth­er pan­el­lists were say­ing, which was all about pre­dic­tive an­a­lyt­ics, us­ing da­ta to do in­spec­tions in a very thor­ough and reg­u­lar way, and re­flect­ing that in­to the equiv­a­lent in off­shore wind.”

The pro­fes­sor not­ed that there re­mained ma­jor con­fi­dence in the en­er­gy sec­tor by most at­ten­dees at the event.

“At the con­fer­ence, it’s been quite re­mark­able about the amount of ac­tiv­i­ty and con­fi­dence that there is in the sec­tor. This is oil and gas, but ob­vi­ous­ly my role here at the con­fer­ence is to look at the syn­er­gies be­tween oil and gas and re­new­ables, par­tic­u­lar­ly off­shore wind, and I’ve seen lots of them,” said Dr Low­don.

Ear­li­er on day one of the con­fer­ence, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, in his fea­ture ad­dress stressed that wind en­er­gy is a re­new­able en­er­gy source that is be­ing tar­get­ed in T&T.

“Through tech­ni­cal sup­port of the Eu­ro­pean Union and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with our state agency Na­tion­al En­er­gy, the MEEI is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in the con­duct of an on­shore Wind Re­source As­sess­ment Pro­gramme, aimed at pro­duc­ing bank­able da­ta to in­form fu­ture on­shore wind auc­tions,” Young said.

Dr Low­don, how­ev­er, said he had not yet been in­volved in such dis­cus­sions but was open to be­ing a part of the con­ver­sa­tion.

“Noth­ing at all yet, but I’m sure his peo­ple have been very in­ter­est­ed in what I’ve had to say. I’m very in­ter­est­ed in what they’ve got to say, of course, and I think it’s the start of a jour­ney where there’s a good de­gree of ex­change,” said Dr Low­don, who ex­plained that the coun­try should ex­plore on­shore wind farms first be­fore ex­plor­ing the off­shore op­tions.

He said, “I think the first step, it’s about tak­ing a step-by-step ap­proach, is land-based wind, on­shore wind, so that will build con­fi­dence in the mar­ket. It will build con­fi­dence in the peo­ple who are in­volved in in­fra­struc­ture that this has got the po­ten­tial to gen­er­ate elec­trons from an on­shore ba­sis, and then take the next step, which will be to lever­age the oil and gas skills in the ocean en­vi­ron­ment to move in­to off­shore wind.”

Over­all, he felt T&T and the wider re­gion had made some progress in terms of the en­er­gy tran­si­tion, but he not­ed there was some way to go.

“It’s cer­tain­ly on the agen­da now. This is from an is­land state point of view for en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, en­er­gy com­po­si­tion, en­er­gy as­set com­po­si­tion. It’s very im­por­tant to have an en­er­gy mix so that, you are not over­ly re­liant on one tech­nol­o­gy or one par­tic­u­lar sys­tem. So that’s start­ing to per­me­ate re­gion­al­ly in the Caribbean, and I ex­pect to see it ac­cel­er­ate,” he said.

But Dr Low­don was not just here for the En­er­gy Con­fer­ence.

Last Fri­day, the Caribbean Drag­ons host­ed a com­mu­ni­ty meet-up for en­tre­pre­neurs. The event was held by the Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tion in part­ner­ship with the British High Com­mis­sion and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce. Caribbean Drag­ons is an NGO serv­ing the en­tre­pre­neur­ial and start-up ecosys­tem with a man­date to en­able Caribbean founders to make sus­tain­able glob­al im­pact.

That event fea­tured an ad­dress by Dr Low­don, which high­light­ed the Glob­al En­tre­pre­neur Pro­gramme (GEP), which is geared to­wards al­low­ing start-ups to ac­cess the UK’s world-class en­tre­pre­neur­ial ecosys­tem.

He al­so spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian about the pro­gramme at the En­er­gy Con­fer­ence on Mon­day.

“One of the things I do work­ing with the British High Com­mis­sion here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, but al­so around the world, is to try and iden­ti­fy ear­ly-stage IP-rich com­pa­nies who would like to scale their op­er­a­tions from the UK. And it’s not to say dis­plac­ing from the home mar­ket, but it is to give them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to grow from a dif­fer­ent ge­og­ra­phy. So what we do is we en­cour­age them to con­sid­er the UK and their sec­tor, and we work with them to make their ar­rival as cosy and as has­sle-free as we can,” said Dr Low­don.

He said the feed­back at Fri­day’s event was promis­ing.

“I gave a pre­sen­ta­tion on Fri­day at the Cham­ber of Com­merce and there was a great deal of in­ter­est in the au­di­ence. So what I’m do­ing is pur­su­ing those con­ver­sa­tions to take them for­ward and to make the op­por­tu­ni­ties re­al, if that’s what the in­vest­ment par­ties want to do. But yes, there has been some in­ter­est, but it was just a seed sow­er, re­al­ly, it’s the first time that many had heard about it, and it’s all about en­thus­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ties to those in­di­vid­u­als,” said Low­don, who ex­plained that many busi­ness­es in the coun­try could make the tran­si­tion to the UK based on its Com­mon­wealth con­nec­tions.

He said, “It’s (be­ing a com­mon­wealth na­tion) one of the big at­trib­ut­es. So the ge­og­ra­phy of the UK, the Time Zone al­lows trade with the rest of the world, both east and west, to be a lit­tle bit more con­ve­nient. But one of the big things that the Glob­al En­tre­pre­neur Pro­gramme al­lows is a great deal of busi­ness and out­reach with Com­mon­wealth coun­tries. So there are a se­ries of soul mates there which are cre­at­ed im­me­di­ate­ly.”

On Fri­day, T&T Cham­ber pres­i­dent Ki­ran Ma­haraj said the pro­gramme opened up a sig­nif­i­cant av­enue for lo­cal busi­ness­es.

“To re­main com­pet­i­tive in a rapid­ly evolv­ing mar­ket­place, Caribbean en­tre­pre­neurs must re­lent­less­ly pur­sue new tech­nolo­gies, ideas, and process­es. By fos­ter­ing lo­cal in­cu­ba­tors, sup­port­ing re­search and de­vel­op­ment, and part­ner­ing with stake­hold­ers such as the T&T Cham­ber and gain­ing sup­port from oth­ers such as the British High Com­mis­sion, we can cre­ate the foun­da­tion and fo­rum to pro­vide a mean­ing­ful en­abling en­vi­ron­ment. This is one of the keys and first steps to sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” she said.

“Glob­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty is the crit­i­cal link that will al­low us to scale be­yond our shores. When our com­pa­nies can eas­i­ly reach new cus­tomers, es­tab­lish in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships, and ex­plore over­seas mar­kets, they can tru­ly flour­ish. Through strate­gic trade agree­ments, dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture en­hance­ments, and shar­ing of glob­al best prac­tices via knowl­edge trans­fer ini­tia­tives, we will un­lock un­prece­dent­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for Caribbean en­tre­pre­neurs,” she added.