An insider finally spoke plainly about your light bill, here is what he got right and wrong

By Horace Palacio:

Something rare happened in Belize this week. A man who sat inside the room, a former director who served five years on the board of Belize Electricity Limited, wrote a long, blunt public post about why your light bill is what it is. No party colors. No slogans. Numbers, and strong opinions about them.

This column has begged for exactly this, former officials arguing substance in public instead of whispering it at cocktail parties. So the man deserves what every serious argument deserves, serious engagement. Today, the honest scorecard. Where the insider is right, and he is right about more than his critics will admit. And where the candid truth needs candid correction, because it does.

Start with what he gets right, and give it fully.

Right, first, that Belize is not the regional ripoff we assume. Our average rate of around 44 Belize cents per kilowatt hour, about 22 US cents, does sit above the world household average of roughly 15 to 17 US cents. But measure us against our actual neighborhood. Across the Caribbean, island nations chained to imported diesel pay 30, 35, even 40 US cents. Against that field, Belize genuinely stands among the cheaper lights in the region. The popular rage assumes we are uniquely robbed. The data says we are not. Credit where due.

Right, second, and this is his strongest point, that saying no to expensive power deals is protection, not obstruction. He describes proposal after proposal landing on BEL’s desk and being rejected because none would lower the cost of power. Understand what a bad power purchase agreement is, Belize. It is a twenty year contract that locks a high price into every light bill in the country for a generation, unbreakable, inherited by governments and grandchildren alike. Readers of this column will recognize it instantly. It is a knife, and once forged, it cuts every administration that inherits it. A board that refuses to forge such knives is doing precisely the guarding this column demands everywhere else. If that discipline held for five years, it deserves applause, not suspicion.

Right, third, that physics holds no party card. He warns that changing government will change nothing about the cost of power or fuel, and he is correct. No election moves Mexican spot prices or world oil. I wrote it myself weeks ago, no villains, just arithmetic. And right, fourth, in his warning glance at South Africa, where scheduled blackouts became a way of life. That is what awaits grids managed by wishes instead of mathematics. We have tasted load shedding here. His warning is a kindness.

Now, the corrections, offered with respect and receipts, because candid truth must also be checked truth.

Correction one. The first world does not run on nuclear. This is the post’s foundation stone, and it does not hold. Nuclear power supplies roughly nine to ten percent of the world’s electricity. In the mighty United States it provides about nineteen percent, and their own energy agency projects that share falling toward twelve. France, running mostly on reactors, is the famous exception on the entire planet, not the rule. And China’s cheap power? Overwhelmingly coal, alongside the largest solar and wind construction program in human history. The nations he admires got their cheap electricity from many kitchens. The reactor was rarely the main one.

Correction two. The world’s price list says the opposite of the post. By the most cited global measures, from the International Energy Agency to the Wall Street analysts at Lazard, the cheapest new electricity on earth today is onshore wind at around three and a half US cents per kilowatt hour, followed by solar at just over four. New nuclear plants land between seventeen and twenty five US cents, two to four times the cost of solar, before a single delay or overrun, and nuclear projects are famous for both. The claim that renewables cannot lower costs does not bend the truth. It inverts the price list of the entire planet.

Correction three. Micro nuclear is not on any shelf Belize can shop from. The idea charms me too, small reactors for small nations. But America’s own flagship small reactor project collapsed in 2023 when its costs soared beyond reach even with heavy government subsidies, and no Western small reactor is delivering cheap commercial power anywhere today. Telling Belize that only micro nuclear will drop our bills is telling us to wait at the dock for a ship that has not been built. The sun, meanwhile, clocks in every morning, free.

And yet, buried inside the post’s errors sits a grain of pure gold, and honesty requires me to polish it. He is right that solar alone will not rescue the Belizean bill, and I wrote the same weeks ago. Solar produces at noon, when our demand and Mexican prices are low. Our crisis lives at night, when there is no sun and batteries turn cheap power dear. He is also right that renewable deals in the Caribbean often arrive overpriced, the region’s own studies confirm it, small projects, no supply chains, one-off negotiations instead of competitive scale. So the correct conclusion was never no solar. It is solar bought right, aimed at the daytime load, procured through open competitive auctions at real scale, exactly the way the cheapest solar in the world gets bought. The difference between a bad PPA and a good auction is the entire game, and his own best rule, reject anything that raises the cost of power, is precisely the rule a good auction enforces.

So here is the synthesis, the one test that should govern every proposed megawatt in Belize, whether it comes from a panel, a dam, a cane field, or someday a reactor. Does it lower the blended cost of power on the Belizean’s bill, with the mathematics published for all to see? Pass the test in an open auction, welcome. Fail it, rejected, no matter how green, how modern, or how connected its salesman. Grow the cheap stable Belizean half, the hydro even the insider ranks highly, the bagasse from our cane. Harvest the day with solar, the Central Bank itself counted 169 megawatts sleeping on our rooftops. Tame the evening peak. Add storage where the arithmetic blesses it. And demote the Mexican line, season by season, from backbone to backup.

Keep the insider’s discipline. Retire his reactor.

To the former director, sincerely, thank you for breaking the silence, and may every former official follow you into the public square with numbers in hand. That is how a small nation grows up.

You are right that there is no free lunch, sir.

You are only wrong about which kitchen cooks cheapest.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author, Horace Palacio, and do not necessarily reflect the views or editorial stance of Breaking Belize News.

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