Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries and Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Stu­art Young MP, has told the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty of this coun­try’s com­mit­ment to re­duc­ing its con­tri­bu­tion to green­house gas emis­sions and tran­si­tion­ing to a green econ­o­my.

A re­lease from the min­istry re­ports that Min­is­ter Young gave the up­date at to­day’s Pre-COP26 Pub­lic Sem­i­nar, host­ed vir­tu­al­ly as a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Unit­ed Na­tion’s Res­i­dent Co­or­di­na­tion Of­fice and the British High Com­mis­sion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.  The sem­i­nar high­light­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s move­ment to­wards a green econ­o­my in prepa­ra­tion for COP26, which is on­ly five days away.

In his keynote ad­dress, Min­is­ter Young out­lined con­crete ac­tions in sup­port­ing the green econ­o­my tran­si­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go. He not­ed that while Trinidad and To­ba­go is not a ma­jor emit­ter of green­house gas emis­sions, the coun­try is tak­ing ac­tions to im­ple­ment cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion and adap­ta­tion poli­cies to re­duce its green­house gas emis­sions.

Minister of Energy and Energy Industries and Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister, Stuart Young MP. (Image courtesy Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries)

"In that re­gard, Trinidad and To­ba­go's aim is to achieve a re­duc­tion in over­all emis­sions from the three sec­tors by 15% by 2030," the Min­is­ter told the Pre-COP26 sem­i­nar par­tic­i­pants.

Min­is­ter Young al­so men­tioned in­com­ing green projects which cur­rent­ly are be­ing un­der­tak­en to meet Trinidad and To­ba­go’s In­tend­ed Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions (iN­D­Cs), in­clud­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of a so­lar util­i­ty and pro­mot­ing a tran­si­tion to Elec­tric Ve­hi­cles as a low car­bon al­ter­na­tive to liq­uid trans­porta­tion fu­els as shown in the re­cent Na­tion­al Bud­get.

"Ad­di­tion­al­ly, ro­bust pol­i­cy mea­sures for for­est, land use and nat­ur­al re­sources man­age­ment are un­der­way that will re­sult in greater mit­i­ga­tion of green­house gas­es, but which are not in­clud­ed as part of the iN­DC," he re­vealed.

Image courtesy United Nations.

In the tran­si­tion to a green econ­o­my, Min­is­ter Young urged per­sons to rec­og­nize that there is no one-size-fits-all mod­el for de­sign­ing an ef­fec­tive green econ­o­my.

"As a pe­tro­le­um-based econ­o­my our path­way may be dif­fer­ent than oth­er coun­tries,” he not­ed, “but our goal is the same and we will be tak­ing the nec­es­sary ac­tion to achieve this ob­jec­tive in a time­ly fash­ion."

Min­is­ter Young reaf­firmed T&T’s com­mit­ment to do­ing its part to re­duce glob­al warm­ing by pro­duc­ing green­er, clean­er en­er­gy and com­modi­ties, work­ing to­wards de­car­boniza­tion, and be­com­ing more en­er­gy ef­fi­cient, whilst bal­anc­ing its oil and gas in­dus­try econ­o­my needs.