The Caribbean is changing, driven largely by external pressures, especially in energy.
Since the early 1900s, Trinidad, our southernmost member, was the only natural energy-producing economy, oil.
After the 1973 oil crisis, there were frenzied attempts to find The Golden Solution, renewable energy, without much success, but with grandiose, uninformed pronouncements by persons, some the least qualified to do so. Caricom, for example, as late as 2013, released a target of nearly 50% renewables achievement by 2027. Currently, up to 90% of all Caribbean energy use is fossil fuel derived.
Note that Energy and Water contribute less than 5% to GDP across the region; but they represent foundation inputs that allow greater impact enterprises like tourism, to thrive.
St. Vincent, with the active support of the World Bank, paid over US$30m in 1987, for less than 4MW of hydro power, six to ten times the global average, rated then the highest unit power cost in World history. That Golden Child was completely abandoned by 2025, lack of consistent water a huge issue. Hydro plants can have lives up to 100 years.
Dominica, The Nature Island, found out that growing bananas was a massive threat to its tiny rivers in an exceedingly mountainous island, with a hydro system first built in the 1950s by CDC, costing more per kW than a nuclear-powered station at the time. St. Lucia paid a heavy price for its Green Gold banana era, 1980s to 1990s, with the island today facing a severe and escalating water crisis. Some sage even suggested developing hydro resources in Guyana and cabling power up the island chain, over 700 miles, to Antigua, ignoring the cost of literally going to the moon. Same for Trinidad gas via undersea pipeline, almost a thousand miles to Puerto Rico.
Montserrat tried wind-power, till hurricane Hugo in 1989 put paid to that dream.
St. Thomas in the USVI, installed 14,000 solar panels, only to see them totally obliterated by Category 5 hurricane Irma in 2017. Reconstructing the farm took nine years. The Golden Solution seemed very elusive.
Then came the new hope, for some, in place of hydro, geothermal power. Truly great, if you have it.
St. Lucia spent thirty years exploring for the resource, 1970s to 2000, which it never found. St. Kitts and Nevis tried it too, in the early 2000s, with predictions of exporting geothermal power and earning millions, to Puerto Rico, separated by waters over 7000 feet deep and two hundred miles away. Puerto Rico is still waiting.
St. Kitts/Nevis in 2011 also tried waste-to-electricity. That initiative lasted just a few months.
Guadeloupe stands out as the sole partial success at the time, after the French government, known for its perspicacity, had spent hundreds of millions of US$ to develop 5MW of geothermal power in 1985 (increased over the years since to 15MW), reportedly including the cost of replacing heavily corroded metal roofs in the village of Bouillante, and cleaning-up the coastal seabed of a fishing community, after hazardous geothermal waste was initially dumped into the sea.
The islands then all went back to what they were very familiar with, the Diesel Engine Generator, known today as a marvel of technology, the most efficient, most reliable and cheapest source of electrical power in the world, bar none, in the tiny amounts that these islands needed. Scale is crucial. One 1000MW steam turbine, capable of supplying all the needs of the OECS and Barbados, produces power at one-tenth the cost of that produced by a 10MW diesel generator, despite the diesel’s superb 50% conversion efficiency, twice that of any solar plant. St. Lucia in 1990 built, arguably, one of the best power systems in the entire Caribbean, on the basis of the diesel generator.
By the 1990s, the international cry was Climate Change, and producing energy from fossil fuel was the main culprit, not specifically the huge factories burning millions of tons of cheap, low-grade coal, and belching galvanic amounts of poisonous waste chemicals and smoke, but employing millions of workers, which was the lifeblood of the First World.
The impoverished Third World, the least of the polluters, just could not be allowed to get away for free.
The manipulation got even more intense.
The one-time Minister for Energy in Uraguay, a relatively small South American nation, said to be 95% empty grassland, gave an address in 2026, stating with the utmost conviction, that more than 90% of Jamaica’s energy needs could be derived from renewable sources (implying the same for the whole Caribbean), as his own country had done. Perhaps! The size of Uraguay, (Jamaica, one-tenth the size), significantly outside the hurricane belt, with a GDP per capita four times that of Jamaica, and classed as a high income developed country, were never a factor. But crucially, in 2026, Uraguay had the highest cost for electricity in South America and ranked among the top 30 or 40 highest in the entire world.
But the idea had caught on, and The Third World was the target.
Today, Dominica is predicting a near 50% reduction in electricity costs having recently found geothermal steam to produce 10MW of power, enough for about 8000 homes; the same had much earlier been said about its hydro-power, until the dry spells started, leaving ultra-expensive equipment useless. St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and St. Kitts/Nevis, are again scrambling to locate their own presumed resources.
St. Lucia is proposing to install a massive solar farm requiring up to 50 acres of pristine lands, with predictions on the basis of huge solar farms in the Nevada desert or in China, or wind generators in the limitless North Atlantic Sea, that electricity costs could be reduced by up to factors of two or more, when the reality, on tiny impoverished islands, in the middle of a perpetually recurring hurricane environment, all with exposed very vulnerable overhead-line grids, is virtually the opposite. The Islands had learned, the hard way, over decades, that there was just no easy or cheap option to replace the diesel generator, and that remains a fact to this day; and all alternative systems require some form of very expensive duplication (diesel or battery?) just for emergency use.
A single 10MW diesel installation can cost up to US$12m on less than a quarter acre of land; a similar sized solar farm can cost up to US$15m on 50 acres (ignoring the cost of land), with huge annual maintenance costs; while a 10MW wind farm will probably cost US$20m on over 100 acres of land; compared with the diesel generator and its unmatched availability of well over 90%; and all will eventually require disposal of hundreds of tons of useless rusting hardware, completely unfit for any landfill. Strangely, while the First World celebrates its giants of commerce and industry, Apple, Space X, Amazon, Alibaba, the Third World must diminish its own on the argument of going green, or regulation or accountability or reducing costs.
Then there is the hurricane threat. The only way to safeguard a power system and ensure its survivability and availability, is to locate it in a secure enclosure. This virtually mandates a diesel generator in a building, which we are very competent to do.
A 90% solar power facility could take months, even years, to be rebuilt after a hurricane disaster, leaving total and perhaps permanent desolation. Even the new philosophies of granting concessions for rooftop solar and self-generation are not without concern. This could see the more capable consumers seek to go-it-alone, leaving the disadvantaged to face higher costs in a declining and less financially secure market.
Finally, a key perhaps not public takeaway; In St. Lucia, it is acknowledged that the crucial state pension fund sees its investment in the local power company as …a cornerstone of its investment portfolio, delivering multi-million EC$ annual dividends… in a stable risk-free environment. Any sensible pension fund operator would seek a higher stake.
The future is full of challenges; this has always been so and will remain so, but openly discussing opportunities and their impacts, getting informed advice, and not be led by external influencers or stories too good to be true are crucial; and never assume a First World solution, in virtually any endeavor, can be replicated in a Third World environment.
In the Caribbean, vehicles contribute the largest percentage to greenhouse emissions compared with the rest of the world, and perhaps here is an opportunity to show a “climate change” compliance, and curb congestion; especially when many islands already host more vehicles per population than several major First World economies.