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Philip Julien is set to transform the economy.
The green energy CEO of Kenesjay Systems and NewGen Energy may be the country’s most ambitious and visionary business leader.
His company, NewGen Energy, will use renewable energy electricity, run through the state-owned electricity company T&TEC, to manufacture hydrogen, using water electrolysis, to sell to our hydrogen-hungry ammonia plants in Point Lisas.
At more than US$300 million, it has the potential to generate more than US$5 million in taxes annually, up to 1,000 construction jobs and a further 200 jobs after completion. When launched next year, this will be the first green hydrogen project of its scale in the world.
Little wonder that investors, including the multi-billion-dollar Blackstone Group have already bitten.
But to understand the real impact of this project, it is necessary to drive down to Point Lisas and speak with the anxious workers at many of the plants mothballed through lack of natural gas. Many have been plunged into depression and hardship as their jobs have vanished.
How will their lives be affected?
On the eve of TT’s annual energy conference, overshadowed by gas curtailments and climate-change upheavals (Exxon Mobil’s management just faced a shareholder uprising that put two “green” directors on its board), I interviewed Julien about the future of energy in TT.
How did your childhood upbringing prepare you for this point?
Mine was a very loving, nurturing home- especially with my mother. I grew up in a household where my dad was exploring new frontiers with like-minded individuals. (Julien’s father, Prof Kenneth Julien, is widely known as the father of the downstream energy industry in TT).
Around the dinner table we had these conversations about what he (his father) was up to, but he never made it a big deal. The approach was kind of like a, “Well, why not do it?” During those formative years, there was never a sentiment that anything couldn’t be done.
I only learned later about Point Lisas and Atlantic, how transformative people saw it. Other people nowadays say: “It’s too much work, we can’t do that here, it’s Trinidad,” but we never heard that.
I left Trinidad in my mid-teens. I went to school in England, went to university in McGill and Montreal. I worked for ten years before feeling the urge to come back home in my early 30s.
I had the pleasure of working alongside Dad for a few years. Moving on to run (aluminium company) Alutrint was an upward chapter. Finally, in mid-2018, when the family relocated to Canada, was when Dad said, 'Look, don’t rush it, you can hold on for Kenesjay Systems as the managing director.'
Many people might have struggled working with a prominent father. Most people in that situation end up with daddy issues!
[caption id="attachment_893094" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Image courtesy NewGen -[/caption]
Dad’s always been unassuming. Some might think: “
