A national energy policy proposal for Trinidad and Tobago: natural-gas cogeneration

This thesis looks at energy policy in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) by focusing on a single policy measure, natural-gas cogeneration, to learn about energy policy in general. It investigates natural gas as it is in the ascendancy, both locally and globally, and because oil is on the decline in T&T. The research further focuses on cogeneration in the industrial sector. It then approximately extrapolates results from the industrial sector to the entire country. The aim can thus be described as assessing natural-gas cogeneration's potential as a policy measure, using the industrial sector as an example. LNG, another major natural-gas use, provides a reference point for locating natural-gas cogeneration in the overall energy policy framework. The industry-wide cogeneration evaluation groups the 1,967 industrial electricity customers in 1998 according to similarity in electricity-use characteristics into 15 subgroups. This allows a study of one or more representatives from each subgroup to apply to the whole subgroup, and thus covers the whole spectrum of industrial electricity customers. This is a fundamental assumption of the research. The research thus essentially becomes a series of cogeneration feasibility studies at individual sites, needing data gathered from extensive fieldwork, and an analysis model constructed in MS Excel, which applies a standard business project-appraisal procedure. The analysis determines that industrial cogeneration in 1998 delivers conservative natural-gas savings of 2.2 billion kWh, or 13.5% of the natural gas used to generate the entire country's electricity in that year. The dollar value of these savings over 20 years is US$0.2 billion, using LNG's natural-gas resource valuation. Considering that a single LNG train uses 48.1 billion kWh natural gas per annum and delivers US$6 billion in revenues over 20 years, cogeneration is a minor policy measure compared to the petrochemical industry, and similarly in an overall natural-gas policy. However, cogeneration's significance to the electricity sector, and its importance in promoting a nationwide natural-gas infrastructure for the future, where the population directly benefits from the resource, renders it an important energy-policy measure.