Reflecting on the public record of Belize’s energy industry

By William Ysaguirre (Freelance Writer)

BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Nov. 5, 2026

   There have been many developments in Belize’s energy industry that are a matter of historical public record. And in light of last Wednesday’s Senate request for an Inquiry into the Energy Sector, a perusal of some relevant events over the past few decades may be helpful.

   In 1995, Prime Minister Sir Manuel Esquivel signed the CFE power purchase agreement with Mexico’s President Echeverria on the balcony of the Governor of Quintana Roo’s palace in Chetumal. This was front page news in the UDP newspaper of the day. In 1995, PEMEX was pumping natural gas, when it pumped oil out of the ground. They could either flare it wastefully to the atmosphere, as occurs in some parts of the Middle East, and as BNE did before it acquired the equipment to capture and store natural gas, or the Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE) could burn it in two 50-megawatt gas turbines. The power demand was not so high in Mexico’s southeastern states: Yucatan, Campeche and Quintana Roo 31 years ago, for their industries were not as developed as they are today. CFE was only too happy to sell Belize their surplus power at US 3.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. CFE power was king! This price now sounds ludicrous when compared to CFE’s current peak hour rates of USD$1.00/kwh! But that 1995 power purchase agreement contained a clause that linked the cost of power to the price of oil. In 1995, no one imagined it could go from USD$30/barrel to over USD$100/barrel.

   In 1995, Mollejon had just been commissioned, and Chalillo did not yet exist! Conservationists and the energy sector viewed the USD$50 million Chalillo project with prejudice, because BECOL power would come in at US 8cts/kwh, which was only slightly cheaper than diesel. Conservationists fought Chalillo’s construction with hammer and tong, tooth and nail, as a threat to wildlife habitat. Now, HydroBelize (Chalillo) has become Belize’s mainstay source of cheap power, the alternative to CFE’s high rates.

   The various conflicts in the Middle East, factors beyond Belize’s control, changed the energy landscape; and as the price of oil rose, so did Belize’s reliance on domestic generation. Belize Electricity Ltd. signed a power purchase agreement with Belize Sugar Industries in 2007, but BELCOGEN did not come fully online until 2009.

   In 2011, Prime Minister Dean Barrow’s UDP administration amended the Electricity Act to acquire majority control of BEL from FORTIS, when the company owed millions of dollars to its power suppliers CFE and BECOL, and BELCOGEN.

   BEL has been seeking to expand solar power generation from before the onset of the COVID pandemic, but as the current chief executive officer of BEL, Lynn Young, recently pointed out, the timeline for a power generation project to come onstream can be anything from 6 to 7 years, due to various constraints such as funding, purchasing of equipment, shipping delays, etc. These delays are exacerbated by foreign international conflicts, and the development of artificial intelligence data centers, which has increased demand and competition for all power generation equipment.

   There are so many factors beyond our control. The war in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East have driven up the price of oil, and with it CFE rates, which are linked to oil prices by the 1995 agreement. The current PUP administration began exploring options for building an 80-megawatt solar generation plant, and sought financing for the project from Saudi Arabia. But in 2024, no one could predict the outcome of the US presidential elections, nor the foreign policy of the new president. 

   Fortis Belize Ltd. proposed to build a photo-voltaic 10-megawatt solar facility at Chalillo, but the National Environmental Appraisal Committee (NEAC) reviewed BECOL’s environmental impact assessment in July 2024 and recommended that BECOL update its EIA to address various issues raised by the committee, and to resubmit the revised EIA and hold another public consultation, before the NEAC would consider the revised EIA. This was despite BEL’s desperate need for more domestic energy generation to avoid CFE’s high rates.