Rolling blackouts have exposed just how vulnerable Belize’s power supply has become, and the government is now treating the situation as an emergency. Cabinet approved BEL’s request for an emergency declaration on Wednesday after the company warned of a significant energy shortfall over the next twelve months. The declaration clears the way for BEL to move quickly to secure additional generation capacity and reduce the threat of further outages. The decision follows weeks of nationwide load shedding after Mexico’s Comisión Federal de Electricidad curtailed electricity exports to Belize. Earlier this week, we asked the Chief Executive Officer in the Ministry of Public Utilities why the emergency declaration is critical to keeping the lights on.
Leroy Almendarez
Dr. Leroy Almendarez, CEO, Ministry of Public Utilities
“Basically what happens is this, just like any other business that is engaged in a product or a service, as demand continues to increase, and I am just using an example, as demand continues to increase for your product for example, one of the things you need to do is forecast in advance. You can see that demand is increasing, so how many more units of my product I may need to produce. If I may not be able to do so and people continue to buy, then that presents a challenge for me. Now in the case of electricity, the BEL does its forecast on a yearly basis or for five years, so you know what the demand is. How do you do your forecast? You have to look historically at what that demand was. So, you can get a yearly average for example. But BEL must also be very much aware of what, in terms of domestic generation or supply is available. And so the regulator is notified but not just notified but provided with the data that shows you here is where we are and here is what the demand looks like. After that review, the PUC does not write BEL. The PUC writes to the Minister of Energy, because the emergency declaration is approved by the Cabinet, not by the PUC.”
Cabinet says the declaration is a proactive step to ensure that the country has sufficient electricity to meet growing demand.
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