NGC’s President, Mark Loquan and National Energy’s President, Dr. Vernon Paltoo, appeared live on CNC3’s ‘Morning Brew’ with Soyini Grey in the lead up to the official opening of the Conference.

Speaking on the topic ‘Greening of Local Energy Sector’, Mr. Loquan stated, “NGC and The NGC Group has been positioning itself over a long period of time. You would have seen that we are in CNG which is also part of the displacement of gasoline and diesel as well as the whole positioning in renewables. But more than that, we have been supplying LNG as far as China, as well as the Caribbean. You would have also seen that carbon dioxide is contributing to the heating up of the planet. What is now getting a lot of international attention is methane which is the second largest contributor to emissions. Methane is far more potent as it heats the planet 84 times more than carbon dioxide.”

Dr. Paltoo spoke on the role that hydrogen is playing locally. He stated, “We want to create an energy sector across the Caribbean that is low in terms of carbon emissions and utilisation. How we hope to achieve this is a gradual transition to hydrogen which is carbon neutral or carbon free fuel. Our intention is to actually lay out the ground-work to enable Trinidad and Tobago to transform its economy and energy sector into a lower carbon scenario and from there, drive into the entire region in terms of low carbon energy usage. We hope to achieve this by transitioning from natural gas to renewable energy, primarily solar in the first instance in Trinidad and Tobago. From here, we want to proceed to develop hydrogen technology in parallel for the production of clean energy for power generation, transportation, and the petrochemical sector.”