Electricity Bills Rise as Renewable Energy Fixes Stay Stuck in the Pipeline
Belizeans facing a new charge on their electricity bills this month are also learning that two major renewable energy projects meant to ease the pressure long-term remain delayed.
Belize Electricity Limited (BEL) says it’s been paying more for power than it charges customers, a gap that widened to over four cents per kilowatt-hour in the past six months. That shortfall is now being recovered through a new Cost of Power Adjustment, capped at 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour and approved by the Public Utilities Commission.
Executive Chairman Lynn Young says the gap came from real strain paying Mexico’s CFE, BEL’s power supplier. “The last year the company had some struggles trying to pay CFE, and there were times when CFE actually said, ‘Listen, if you don’t come up with money, we’re gonna have to disconnect you.'”
The increase has drawn criticism, including from Union Senator Glenfield Dennison, who tied it to a broader affordability crisis facing Belizeans. “So when you can’t lower the prices of things we need as input, so your labor can feed you and your family, we will be in a bad place as a country. What we need is to ensure that we have a plan of action to address poverty.”
Prime Minister John Briceño has since directed Public Utilities Minister Michel Chebat to meet with BEL and the PUC and hold a public briefing. Briceño defended the increase, pointing to how badly BEL has been losing money buying power during peak hours. “They have a shortage of energy during the prime hours. So BEL has been buying energy for as much as one dollar U.S. a kilowatt, and we are only selling it for forty cents, forty-two cents Belize. BEL has been selling energy to the public at a loss. It is a crisis, and we as a government are holding back BEL from raising these prices. And it comes to the time when it has to happen, and it happened unfortunately.”
Two renewable energy projects meant to fix that long-term remain stalled. Briceño confirmed funding for a multimillion-dollar Saudi-backed solar project was approved quickly, but the process itself has taken years. “The first thing we did before you even asked is trying to get a loan from the Saudis. While they approved it immediately, it takes a long process to go through with them. They are a huge country with many other issues they are dealing with. So we are at the point where we are starting to get the people interested that will be prepared to do the solar project.”
A separate hundred-million-dollar World Bank loan for a forty-megawatt energy storage project hit its own obstacle: a squatter occupying the BEL-owned site in San Pedro. “There was a delay because there was this person who was squatting on the land owned by BEL, in San Pedro, where he was supposedly protecting the iguanas. He lived for two years, and it was a scam. I met with the official from the World Bank on Wednesday and Thursday and told them when nameless bureaucrats Washington just hold back a project because of something when he was there illegal, it is not like it is the only sanctuary for the iguanas. You keep us back, we could have already had that project going. That would have allowed us to buy forty megawatts of energy from Mexico at two or three o’clock in the morning when it is only three or four cents.”
Briceño says government’s broader energy emergency declaration could still bring new power producers online within a year, potentially saving BEL twenty-eight million dollars annually, but acknowledged progress will take time.