Belize Continues Push for Energy Independence

In related energy news, the Government of Belize is continuing efforts to reduce its reliance on imported power from Mexico, despite the recent announcement of an $8.1 billion USD investment to strengthen the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE). The CFE announced earlier this week that the project to upgrade the country’s transmission network will see the construction of 275 new transmission lines and 524 new electrical substations. These will be built between the period 2025-2030 as part of a Strengthening and Expansion Plan, which will also increase generation capacity by 29,074 megawatts, and an additional 6,400 megawatts from private investment. Prime Minister John Briceno says that these upgrades might have some benefits down the road, but there are major concerns about Mexico’s ability to keep a steady supply in the short term while the projects are underway.

John Briceño, Prime Minister of Belize: “Well, actually they’re investing in  starting to produce 1.2 gigawatts of energy. But the problem is that they’ve been saying that it would have been coming online from last year, with 2025 is still not ready, 2026. Building the plants is one thing but the problem that they’re also having is the transmission of the natural gas to Merida and to Valladolid. That is where the two plants are. And so that is going to be another project that could take some time. And so the experts at BEL, they’re saying that they’re a bit concerned. They’re afraid that maybe who knows, next year, Mexico might say, you know what, I can’t give you energy  for the next year or two and we can’t afford that. We need to make sure that we have energy at all times for the tourism industry, for agriculture, for the call centers, you know, they can’t afford to run out of energy. So we decided that, you know, we have to make decisions for Belize. We have to make sure that we could start to produce more and more of our own energy  through renewable sources and then use Mexico as a backup. But in the long term what we’re doing we’re also working on how we can connect to the Central American grid, CAPAC.  And if we do that, then we can buy from them and sell into them. So as I tell investors, when you come to Belize, don’t think about Belize. Think Central America, think Mexico and also the Caribbean. And that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

Interestingly, Mexico recently announced an injection of some eight billion dollars into the expansion their electricity grid.  It was just last year that countries in the region grappled with increasing energy demands as temperatures increased heading into and during the summer months. Mexico’s CFE began load shedding, cutting the power it exported to countries like Belize to ensure it could supply its local energy needs.