The National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago Limited (NGC) and UWI St Augustine have completed the second installment of a project to measure the positive impact of the company’s reforestation programme. This phase of the project, which was created to calculate the amount of carbon dioxide that is removed from the atmosphere by trees, focused on below ground carbon sequestering from the roots.
First covered last year in UWI TODAY, https://sta.uwi.edu/uwitoday/archive/march_2020/article4.asp, UWI started working with NGC on carbon sequestering projects in 2018.
“Trees take carbon dioxide out of the air and convert it into solid wood, which is how the carbon is sequestered, and helps to ameliorate climate change warming from greenhouse gases,” explained Professor John Agard, one of the world’s leading climate scientists and Director of the St Augustine Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (STACIE).
Prof Agard, who is also lead on the UWI team of staff and students working with NGC on the project, said:
“The first project measured above ground carbon sequestration and the second project looked at below ground carbon sequestration from tree roots.”
This second phase of the project started in 2020 and was completed in June of this year. Innovation played a great part in the carbon measuring exercise as the team was able to gather data not only from standard trees, but also mangrove trees, which have complex prop roots.
The team went deep into NGC’s reforestation sites in Mayaro, Moruga, Rio Claro, Grant’s Trace, and Guapo/Parrylands. They used advanced technological equipment – laser-based devices such as hypsometers to measure height, and electronic calipers to measure diameter – to calculate the volume and mass of trees.
In 2005, as part of its No Net Loss policy, NGC embarked on an operation to plant 100,000 seedlings representing 17 indigenous plants in south Trinidad. Community groups were instrumental to this effort. Residents from the nearby communities assisted with the planting.
The company also provided capacity building training in group formation and seedling propagation. Four thousand plants were resupplied from community nurseries.
Through this programme, NGC has sequestered 8,404 tonnes of total carbon above ground and 2,185 tonnes below ground within the 79.25 hectares of land being maintained.
These encouraging results have laid the foundation for the next phase of the project, the Beyond 315 Programme. Myles Lewis, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at NGC, explained that the initiative will lead to “community economic development and sustainability, and continued development for NGC’s community reforestation groups through several interventions”. They plan to transition the reforestation groups to a point where they are self-sustaining.
According to Mr Lewis, “Our aim is to be recognised as a global leader in the development of sustainable energy-related businesses.” He stressed that this is all in keeping with NGC’s strategic focus on sustainability. The carbon sequestration study forms part of their Green Agenda, which embraces renewables, energy efficiency, fuel switching, advocacy and carbon capture.
NGC believes the programme can have positive regional implications. “[We] can play a role via knowledge and information transfer for other organisations seeking to initiate such a project.”
As to the partnership between The UWI and NGC, both organisations are satisfied with the response and envision future collaborations.
“The relationship between UWI and NGC is outstanding,” says Prof Agard. “My expectation is that this will continue as NGC for many years has had a memorandum of understanding with UWI through which they have provided support for many projects ranging from an Entrepreneurship Unit in the Faculty of Social Sciences to projects in the Faculty of Humanities and Education.”
