Cayman's electricity came about 97% from diesel last year, a national policy approved by Cabinet says 30% of it must be renewable by 2030, and the Premier has now told the business community that he wants a costed route off the fuel within 18 to 20 months, with liquefied natural gas back on the table if solar cannot be built fast enough. Caribbean Utilities Company (CUC), in response, has disclosed that its LNG procurement already has a preferred bidder and that gas could be in use "as soon as 2029".

Speaking at the Chamber of Commerce's annual parliamentary luncheon at the Kimpton on Friday 9 October, André Ebanks MP said Finance Minister Rolston Anglin MP had asked the Utility Regulation and Competition Office (URCO) "to take another look and analysis of how we are going to get ourselves off of diesel".

"If it's going to be too slow and you can't do 100% of the solar, do we need to look at LNG as a transitional fuel?" he said. "Those of us who are 100% solar, including myself, have to think how we're going to get this done, because this problem cannot go on another political term. Our country needs breakthrough relief now."

Government, he said, would receive the regulator's report "with a timeline as quickly as possible, to assess our options to see what can be done in the next 18 to 20 months."

The remarks set a political deadline that the published numbers make stark. CUC, the Grand Cayman generator and distributor, reported in its 2025 annual report that renewable sources supplied 21.4 million kilowatt hours of the 779.6 million kWh it generated, a little under 3%. To do that it burned 40.6 million imperial gallons of diesel at an average of US$3.55 a gallon, a net fuel bill of US$141.6 million that is passed through to customers without margin. The National Energy Policy 2024 to 2045, approved by Cabinet on 16 April 2024 as the first update to the original 2017 policy, sets interim targets of 30% renewable electricity by 2030 and 70% by 2037 on the way to 100% by 2045.

"The enemy on your bill is fuel cost"

The Premier was explicit that his target was the fuel line, not the utility. He asked CUC president and chief executive Richard Hew to stand, to laughter, and said that if anyone received "the vilification treatment that MPs get", it was Mr Hew. Visiting Financial Action Task Force officials, he said, had been "stunned by Cayman's infrastructure", and CUC was "world class".

"So I submit to you all, if you can see where the red is, the enemy is not CUC," he said, pointing to a slide of a typical bill. "We as a country have to identify that the enemy on your bill, on all of our bills, is fuel cost, not CUC. That is the line that OT leaders, including myself, said we have to attack."

"If that line goes down for every household and every business, then, guess what, every piece of cost of living in the country goes down."

The fuel cost charge, approved by the regulator and adjusted monthly, rose sharply this summer on the back of conflict in the Middle East. Government's response, announced on 29 April, was a three-phase plan whose first phase capped the residential fuel charge at CI$0.18 per kWh on the first 2,000 kWh of monthly use, for customers consuming between 101 and 3,500 kWh, and waived import duty on gasoline and diesel from 1 June to 30 September. The electricity credits run on bills issued from July to October, and the package was costed at about CI$9 million. The plan's second phase, from 2027, is an expanded home energy efficiency retrofit programme; its third is the solar scale-up.

The Premier acknowledged that, strong fiscal numbers notwithstanding, "there's still pressure on households. We know it." The relief, he said, was never built to last. "It is a short-term measure. We built it as a partnership with CUC because it's tough," he said. "We live in a country where we rely on imports. So no government here, no member, no matter who's elected, can control if countries go to conflict overseas and prices go up." Government had to "think very long and hard" about what followed: "Do too much, that fiscal performance that I showed you can go another way. Don't do anything at all, people don't get help."

A second look at a fuel already studied

The Premier's phrase was "another look", and the record shows why. The policy's own Implementation and Monitoring Plan, published by URCO, contains an action to determine whether natural gas, imported as LNG or compressed natural gas, is "viable, feasible and safe as a transitional power generation option", and records its status as "Initial independent study has been completed". The plan's fuel sector strategy likewise directs government to consider transitional fuels "where economically advantageous and prudent".

CUC, it emerges, is well past finding out. In a written response to The Caymanian Journal (TCJ) on 13 October, a CUC spokesperson said the company "has conducted an RFP with regional LNG suppliers with approval from URCO" and that "this procurement has now been approved to enter the detailed feasibility and project development stage with a preferred bidder". The process "has attracted five proposals from recognised LNG providers".

CUC completed life-cycle upgrades on five generating units in 2025, and the spokesperson said all five "are largely ready for conversion to run in dual fuel configuration", needing only gas fuel systems and engine room upgrades. Those engines represent about 64 megawatts, 39% of CUC's installed capacity of 166 MW, and a further 40 MW of existing capacity can be converted.

On cost, the spokesperson said electricity from the converted engines "could have an energy cost of approximately half that of current diesel costs". If LNG accounted for 50% of fuel-based generation by 2029, CUC estimates annual savings of approximately CI$41.4 million against diesel generation costs it put at CI$0.25 per kWh, "or a 13% reduction in the average residential customer's bill".

On timing, the company's answer sits some distance from the Premier's. Once the procurement is awarded, the spokesperson said, CUC "anticipates an 18-month period to validate the technical and commercial assumptions associated with LNG, which could be available as soon as 2029". The Premier's 18 to 20 month horizon from Friday runs to roughly the middle of 2028, within the current parliamentary term; he said he did not want the problem handed to the next one.

CUC said it "welcomes the Honourable Premier's comments", "has long advocated for reducing the Cayman Islands' reliance on diesel generation" and "has consistently supported utility-scale solar as a sustainable, long-term energy solution". It said it understood customers' frustration and continued to offer payment plans, extensions and property audits. "More than ever," the spokesperson said, "now is the time to make progress towards energy resources that do not rely on diesel fuel."

What the Premier did not say on Friday is how a second imported fossil fuel, with its own terminal, storage and regasification plant, would be reconciled with a policy that requires electricity supply emissions to fall 30% below 2019 levels by 2030 and to zero by 2045, or whether the URCO analysis has been asked to answer that. His framing was that solar remained the destination and that speed was the problem.

The solar record

The speed problem is documented. URCO's competitive request for proposals for a 22.5 megawatt dispatchable solar and battery facility, described by CUC in its annual report as the country's largest-ever utility-scale solar project, has drawn a proposal from CUC itself; no award has been announced. Asked when it could be operating, CUC said it "cannot provide an anticipated operational date for the 22.5 MW solar facility, as the project is currently progressing through the regulatory process". The country's only operating solar farm, Bodden Town Solar 1, sells CUC a minimum of 8.8 gigawatt hours a year under a 25-year power purchase agreement, roughly 1% of what the grid generated last year.

On 9 March URCO approved CUC's revised certificate of need, the regulatory finding that Grand Cayman requires additional generating capacity; the published approval specifies no fuel or technology for it, leaving that to a competitive procurement. Phase three of government's April plan committed to "scale up solar generation in line with the National Energy Policy" from 2027.

Overseas Territories "all relied on diesel"

The Premier placed the diesel question in the context of the Caribbean Overseas Territories Caucus in Hamilton, Bermuda, from 8 to 10 September.

"Every one of the leaders was in our position, relied on imports, relied on diesel," he said. "How do we do this? Because we know, to Cristina's point, short term can't last forever." The reference was to Chamber president Cristina Spratt, who had earlier listed energy costs among the measures the Chamber's forthcoming government scorecard will track.

The leaders, he said, had looked "as a group at what's really holding us down, and energy is by far number one". The caucus outcome statement of 21 September names "the cost of energy" among the drivers of rising living costs; it does not mention diesel or renewables.

A glacier and the "development dilemma"

The Premier closed on the environment in a more personal register, showing a family photograph taken in Alaska in July in front of a glacier that park staff said had stood, 40 years earlier, where the family was now standing. "It gave you a real sense of how desperate global warming is. So we know we need to take care of the environment."

Government had set up a working group under Hector Robinson KC to "bridge the gap between development and environment", he said, calling it "a thorny issue". Minister Jay Ebanks MP and Chief Officer Eric Bush were "revamping planning legislation", with a development plan to go to the House "if not by the end of the year, by Q1 next year", and the country would have to "admit to ourselves that the land in the country is finite and we may have to go higher".

He ended with a conversation the previous day with a developer at the Watermark, who he said had agreed "in a heartbeat" to put CI$2 million into affordable housing near his project in return for expedited processing. "Will you partner with me to crack this development dilemma?" he asked the room.

Context

Mr Ebanks, leader of The Caymanian Community Party and MP for West Bay South, heads the National Coalition for Caymanians government sworn in on 6 May 2025. The National Energy Policy sits with Katherine Ebanks-Wilks MP's Ministry of Health, Environment and Sustainability and is due for its first two-year review this year; URCO's board recorded in March that it had met Mr Anglin, as Minister for Finance and Economic Development, on regulatory priorities and had discussed fuel prices with ministers.

Responses

TCJ emailed the Office of the Premier, the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development and CUC on 12 October seeking comment on the request to URCO, the scope and timing of the diesel analysis and the Premier's remarks, with a deadline of 13 October. CUC's response is reported above.

The Office of the Premier replied the same day that the query had also been sent to the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development and that the Ministry's communications manager, Christina Trumbach, "will provide the response". Ms Trumbach acknowledged receipt and said the questions "are complex and require research and reaching out to several different agencies, followed by an internal approval process", asking for a minimum of three business days. No substantive response had been received from the Ministry by the time of publication.