Untapping the Caribbean's renewable energy

Philip Julien is carving his path in regional energy leadership. As the founder of Kenesjay Systems Limited and its sustainable energy firm Kenesjay Green Limited (KGL), Julien is among the early groundswell of energy innovators who recognised the need for economic advancement to link with environmental responsibility.

“The world is demanding green hydrogen derivative products in an amount that helps us achieve the Paris agreement goals. Now, the Caribbean is waking up to the fact that we are sitting on a material source of providing that green hydrogen derivative commodity to the rest of the world. We have a strong business case for putting down large scale solar or large scale wind or large scale geothermal plants. Caribbean countries can forge partnerships to become a green ammonia, green methanol production hub. We must set the stage for international investors to look at the Caribbean through a different lens.”

KGL is empowering the Caribbean’s energy transition by working to decarbonise existing brownfield energy-based industries. Formed in 2020, KGL is spearheading the development of new greenfield projects, and successfully launched its low carbon green hydrogen project, NewGen Energy in Trinidad. Dominica, a treasure trove of geothermal potential, took note, and KGL has signed on to “help them manifest their vision of a green energy, green hydrogen economy”.

“Dominica has been gallantly progressing the completion of their first year thermal plan, which features a 10 MW geothermal production facility. And that's phenomenal. And that's in service of the citizenry keeping their lights on at a much more affordable and environmentally friendly way.

Dominica wants to unlock more of their geothermal potential through the development of a large-scale green hydrogen to green ammonia facility and KGL is supporting the conceptualisation. We're exploring the feasibility of converting 100MW of their geothermal untapped potential to green hydrogen through the electrolysis of water, and then converting that green hydrogen to green ammonia. This could then be used both domestically and for export. 

We're excited about the completion of the 10MW project as it’s a kind of proof of concept - it breaks the mindset that this cannot be done. And instead, not only can it be done, we can now look at doing it to scale because there's such a large global demand for this green ammonia.”

Julien is putting Caribbean stakeholders on alert: We must tap into our exceptional potential. In response to the climate crisis, the world is demanding green energy and our islands are sitting on significant natural resources that can drive our development.

“When I started Kenesjay, there were a lot of bright people in Trinidad and Tobago who had already started connecting the dots that the economic imperative of increasing our supply of natural gas or equivalent was being matched by an environmental imperative of saving our planet from getting too warm, too fast, too soon. I had the ‘AHA!’ moment of recognising that those two objectives combine in Trinidad and Tobago's case in particular - Trinidad has space to increase its feedstock supply for its petrochemical plants, its ammonia and methanol plants, while decreasing its fossil fuel utilisation. And this coincides with the requirement of the globe reducing its amount of fossil fuel consumption in those very same industries.”

In the UN climate change process, countries have agreed to transition away from fossil fuels. As part of the Global Stocktake ‘energy package’, tripling renewable energy and doubling energy efficiency by 2030 are key elements of countries’ commitments to accelerate action to reduce global emissions.

Julien’s final reflection centred on his participation at Climate Analytics Caribbean’s Re-Energise Caribbean Workshop in March, 2025, which brought together key stakeholders focused on advancing the region’s clean energy transition.

“For me, it was a refreshing reminder that we can do this because we are small, but we are mighty. And if we put our combined efforts and intellectual prowess together in tandem with a small group of key stakeholders, both in the public and private sector, we can absolutely do this together.”

Kenesjay Green Limited is continuing its journey helping Caribbean countries realise their green energy, green hydrogen economic potential with an eye set toward expansion into green fuel for shipping. Mr. Julien is also overseeing renewed advancements on the NewGen project, which KGL aims to position as a green energy flagship for the Caribbean to rally behind.