(CNS): Premier André Ebanks has said that although he recently raised the idea of using liquefied natural gas (LNG) to reduce power bills, he would still prefer the Cayman Islands to convert to 100% renewable sources, such as solar. 
But he told the press last week that the government is looking at LNG because of frustrations, delays and challenges over rolling out both utility-scale and domestic solar. Since the country can’t seem to get switching to solar to happen, LNG could be a transition fuel to cut the cost of living, he said.
But while LNG may be cheaper than diesel, it also has numerous problems, including cost, supply chain volatility, and the investment required, which would tie Cayman to fossil fuels for two more decades.
Ebanks appears reluctant for the Grand Cayman to convert to LNG, but despite holding the reins of power, he admitted that he could not understand why it is taking so long to convert to solar. He also acknowledged that fuel prices are the main driver of Cayman’s cost-of-living crisis. 
Over the last few months, the premier has expressed his view that the government must bring down energy costs to help local families and businesses, but he is clearly concerned that there seems to be no quick way to do this.
He made it clear that he did not have an answer for why Cayman, which currently generates just 3% of its power from solar, has struggled to transition to renewables. The delay appears to stem from a combination of issues related to CUC’s ownership and control of the grid on Grand Cayman and ongoing clashes between the power company and the regulator.
There are also potential problems with the actual deal between government and CUC, and significant concerns that no administration has had the political will to force the hands of those involved.
To reach 100% renewables in less than 20 years, as called for in the National Energy Policy, investment in utility-scale solar is clearly needed. But the constant restrictions on domestic or rooftop solar appear to stem from CUC’s position that renewables are unstable and could threaten grid security unless rolled out slowly.
Part of the problem is that the information needed to understand the accuracy of CUC’s claims is contained in reports conducted by the power company, and those reports remain under wraps. An FOI request to the regulator, OfReg, for CUC’s solar reports was declined, and although the Office of the Ombudsman (OMB) ordered its release on appeal, CUC fought the disclosure in court.
In June, the court ordered the OMB to rehear the appeal in relation to the FOI request for the reports, which CUC claims are commercially sensitive documents. That rehearing of the FOI appeal is understood to still be in process.
Meanwhile, the question of how much domestic solar destabilises CUC’s grid is up for debate. James Whittaker, the president of the Cayman Renewable Energy Association, has said many times that this is simply not the case. The government should support the adoption of solar power, and no one should be stopped from using rooftop solar panels.
“The idea that more solar is a safety issue for the grid doesn’t survive a look at the numbers,” Whittaker told CNS this week. He noted that the Cayman Islands generate around 3% of their electricity from renewables, whereas Kauai, an island with a grid smaller than Grand Cayman’s, runs at around 60%. South Australia produces more than 70% of its energy from wind and solar.
“They enable high rates of clean energy penetration with battery storage, which is now standard on both large solar plants and home solar systems and makes a grid more stable and resilient, not less. At 3%, how much solar the grid can safely take is not the problem. The problem is who decides whether it gets built.
“On Grand Cayman, almost every megawatt of solar runs through one company. It owns the grid; it is the only buyer of the power; it writes the technical rules for connecting; it sets and caps the rooftop solar programs; and it has information on how much solar the grid can carry, which the public has not seen.”
Whittaker believes that since one company holds “almost every lever” and renewables generate such a small percentage of energy, that company’s motives are clear. “The people being asked whether more solar is safe are the people who would have to compete with it,” he noted.
“The government knows how to proceed. Its own plan in 2022 was for government and its partners to be the majority owner of utility-scale renewable plants, with the utility paid to operate and maintain all of them.
“That model gets hundreds of megawatts built rapidly, puts the majority of the financial benefit with the public and local pension funds, and keeps the utility in a well-paid role without handing any single company control and ownership of the island’s clean energy for the next fifty-plus years.
“Had it gone ahead then, Grand Cayman would likely already be above 50% renewable today and largely insulated from the fuel shocks on everyone’s bill,” he claimed.
Whittaker pointed out that the best time to have done this was yesterday, but the next best time is today. However, the current situation means this won’t be happening tomorrow, next week, or even next year.
“Two decisions are needed: build utility-scale solar and storage at scale under a structure that doesn’t lock in a monopoly over the sun, and put solar on every rooftop and parking lot that can take it, with broad financing so ordinary households can access it too.
“Do those two things and Cayman is a world leader within five years. None of this is new. What has been missing is the decision, and waiting for a crisis to make it for us is not a plan,” Whittaker told CNS. He warned that the idea that LNG is a viable energy solution for Cayman is a trap and a waste of our resources.
“All it does is lock the country into a new fossil fuel for the next several decades and increase our dependence on a source of energy even more volatile than diesel,” he stated.
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Easy for him to say, he can afford it. Solar is expensive to install and the payback in savings is years. It is out of reach for most people and limited space such as roofs make it an insurance liability and unlikely to survive even a mild hurricane.
So Cuba and Pakistan can afford solar but Cayman can’t?
I mean, dear god, Jamaica has wind turbines.
This is all just proof that the Government is the primary obstruction (acting in collusion with the monopoly energy provider).
As opposed to the ‘cheap’ LNG option which requires years in advance hundred-million-dollar investments in storage facilities.
Modern solar panels can be securely attached to basically any surface and are often hurricane rated up to windspeeds equivalent to Cat 4-5s when installed correctly, they are also replaceable. Just like anything in a hurricane nothing is guaranteed but if your position is that we can’t adopt them because they may get damaged in a storm I expect that you live in a cave as houses are also susceptible to hurricane damage correct?
Just vote out Andre. he had his chance. miss us all with the BS and excuses. You only get one term in Cayman now. NO MORE MCKEEVA’s, its ONE term only to prove that you should get 2 or 3. ONE! im so sick of West Bayers ruining this island with their vote.
Cayman stand up and tell me im lying!
Andre isn’t the problem. It’s ONOV that gets the likes of Jay Ebanks and Isaac Rankine in.
It’s not easy when you’re tail is wagging you, not the the other way around is it Mr. Premier? It’s also not easy when you’re eye is on your next jaunt overseas to attend a much more critical financial affairs conference.
Maybe if you’d stop talking out both sides of your mouth and start by demanding CUC actually achieve tangible milestones towards Cayman’s renewable energy targets rather than complaining that’s it’s difficult and complicated. OfReg is not doing its job once again, what a surprise? Amend CUC’s licence if need be, CUC needs to comply absolutely.
Even a layperson can see it’s easier for CUC to let go the reins on solar than invest heavily into infrastructure for another fossil fuel. Besides how long are CUC’s current engines good for, 15 years maybe? Then what, more engines and we’ll still be paying for obsolete LNG infrastructure 30 years from now? You must be mad, the low pressure from altitude must have really gone to your head man!
You don’t know what you’re talking about. CUC attempted to get massive utility-scale solar installed, and OfReg, appointed by CIG blocked them.
Are you mentally subnormal? Does reality have any meaning to you?
Reality is you most likely have imbibed way too much CUC Koolaid.
Answer the question. Deal with the facts.
Did CUC apply for the installation of massive utility-scale solar? Yes or no?
Did OfReg block it? Yes or no?
Where CUC was forced to take OfReg to court and did OfReg capitulate because they were acting unlawfully (and the subtext of this is that there was a crusade by CIG against CUC)?
Truly, this is a third-world country with a significant number (not all) of third-world people who are easily manipulated. Your enemy is your politicians. They want to make CUC a bogeyman so they can whip up hatred like they do against expats generally. Please try to rub both of your brain cells together, and don’t fall for it quite so easily.
100% solar power is highly unlikely to be economically achievable in the near future. Around 75% would be a realistic target. Simply consider the quantity and cost of the battery storage required. The country will likely always require a fuel based reserve generation capability. Maybe one day when the cost of battery infrastructure is more realistic it can be achieved.
You know, it is quite easy to have GTP do the research for you, so you can comment with facts.
Off you go then and do 100% solar for your house for 100% of the time. That is, be disconnected from the CUC fuel power backup – which is allowed. That is what 100% solar means. See how economical it is just for your house. Now multiply that out for every residence and commercial property on the island.
I set out who is to blame under the LNG story last week: https://caymannewsservice.com/2026/10/premier-backing-methane-gas-as-solution-to-fuel-crisis/#comment-735508
In short, CUC behaves exactly as the monopoly CIG licensed it to be – they are doing nothing wrong. Blame OfReg and CIG. OfReg threw out CUC’s own 100MW solar plan, reversed itself only when CUC went to court, and forced OfReg to admit it lacks the engineering expertise to regulate the company it is meant to oversees. CIG wrote a National Energy Policy and left it to rot.
I would change one thing in my comment: my “kept it local” jibe was aimed at Michael Myles and the xenophobic hiring culture he champions, which keeps real overseas expertise out of jobs like this, and not at Sonji Myles. My apologies to Sonji.
Now André tells us he cannot understand why solar is taking so long. His excuse of a government appoints the regulator’s board, owns the energy policy, and has CUC’s grid licence coming up for renewal in April 2028. Yet the man holding every lever has no answer. The 10:35am commenter supplies one: Wayne Panton announced a public solar ownership model in 2022, and CIG never turned it into policy. Announce, subsidise, blame someone else, repeat.
A political system that rewards this level of singular incompetence will never deliver an effective solar power grid, and tinkering with OfReg won’t change it. Cayman needs complete electoral reform: https://caymannewsservice.com/2026/05/dubai-has-drone-strikes-cayman-has-beauty-queens-dubai-is-winning/
Wayne’s proclamation was never realistic. Government can barely deploy capital to core infrastructure under FFR – what made him think they had spare hundreds of millions sitting around for solar ownership stake and deployment?
As for local pension funds partnering government to supply supplemental funding – typically most would (should) look to avoid double risk exposure by having concentrated capital exposed to our geographical risks.
The government never turned it into a policy because it was a poorly-conceived idea to transplant into our context. The former Premier screwed us all over because he was convinced otherwise by certain parties and then destabilized the very entities he held the levers for by injecting all that uncertainty just when OfReg was finally starting to try to kickstart meaningful solar development.
CIG needed to give CUC advance warning in 2023 if they intended to revisit their license. Guess what..? They didn’t do that, so we are automatically locked in to the same license for another 20 years.
While the Cayman Islands benefits from abundant sunshine, relying on solar power for 100% of its electricity requirements is not realistically feasible under current technological and economic conditions. The fundamental challenge is that solar electricity generation is intermittent. Solar panels produce electricity only during daylight hours, and output can decline significantly during cloudy or stormy weather. Cayman requires a continuous, reliable electricity supply, particularly for essential services such as hospitals, water desalination, businesses and air conditioning.
A fully solar-powered system would require enormous battery storage capacity to provide electricity overnight and during extended periods of poor weather. Grand Cayman consumes approximately 2.2 gigawatt-hours of electricity daily. Providing sufficient storage for even three days of electricity consumption could require battery investments approaching US$2 billion, before accounting for solar installations, grid upgrades and other infrastructure. Furthermore, batteries would need to be recharged after extended periods of reduced solar generation, creating additional capacity requirements and costs.
Land availability presents another significant obstacle. Generating enough electricity to meet Cayman’s annual demand would require hundreds of megawatts of solar capacity, potentially occupying thousands of acres if installed primarily in ground-mounted solar farms. Given Cayman’s limited land area, high property values and competing residential, commercial and environmental priorities, constructing solar installations on this scale would be particularly challenging. Rooftop solar could reduce, but not eliminate, these constraints.
Finally, Cayman’s exposure to hurricanes makes exclusive reliance on solar especially problematic. Major storms can damage solar installations, disrupt transmission infrastructure and substantially reduce solar generation for several consecutive days. A system dependent entirely on solar and batteries would therefore face significant resilience risks. A more realistic approach would be to maximise solar generation while retaining complementary energy sources, substantial battery storage and dependable backup generation. Cayman could potentially achieve a very high proportion of renewable electricity, but pursuing 100% solar without alternative generation would involve disproportionate costs and unacceptable risks to electricity reliability.
You are entirely correct, but the morons downvoting you are too stupid to realise.
Further, the intellectually retarded local politicians struggle to plan beyond their packed lunch, and therefore they just say whatever they think will sound good for the next 12 to 24 hours.
André has no idea what he’s talking about. Fortunately for him, nor do his voters. Never mind, just free solar. He should promise free SUVs and free housing to everyone – perhaps about six months before the next election. Enough voters are stupid enough to vote for it.
No. I voted the original comment down because this does not actually have to be done on a utility scale. It can be done by individual property owners, at their own expense, in $100K increments. All that is needed is quick and efficient regulatory approvals.
Reduced import duties could be a great incentive.
There is zero import duty on residential solar systems, which has been the case for more than the past five years.
The National Energy Policy addresses all of those points. https://gov.ky/documents/35692/0/National+Energy+Policy+2024-2045_compressed.pdf/13330123-12b0-7663-7248-3bec69237410?t=1763404410542
You might disagree with their assumptions (as their document does with yours) re diesel costs saved vs expenses needed for batteries & panels, and the potential for distributed solar to reduce land need and disaster risk (a good lesson among others to learn from Puerto Rico), but at least they’ve thought of them too.
This headline is misleading. Who and where on earth did anyone suggest methane as an alternative energy source?
LNG as suggested is mostly methane.
especially when you look at the production process and the damage that methane could do to a fragile island environment over 20 years.
28@12:19pm -It could be if one harnesses the amount of BS coming out of our House of Parliament. Major methane source!
LNG is (mostly) methane. I agree an impolite headline, but it did get our attention didn’t it.
It’s actually beyond a joke now how F’d up this country is when it comes to this. Solar should be mandatory on every new build, and cheap as F to install on existing structures, due to the demand there would be if CUC stepped the F back. There should be hundreds of containers of panels coming in yearly (reducing the costs to buy). But they block it all. I am a CUC shareholder and I can’t stand the policies they have. All this on a low lying island too. SMH!
CUC needs to get with the program – instead of their top people jetting across the globe attending conference, gaining graduate degrees funded by the company, and feathering their own nests. I read about Board members and the company winning awards when they are basically incompetent and responsible for the financial strife of so many local people is criminal. The rich expats moving to this country can afford to pay $1500 a month for power, the rest of certainly cannot. The recent tragedy where a family’s power was cut off and they were using a generator is a prime example of why we all need solar – NOW not in 10 YEARS!
So, majority of the overseas companies registered here are chinese registrations? Shein and so many others operate from Cayman. Now, this solar idea, with majority of panels being made by china, even the minerals and mines are chinese cornered; This would really give cayman government a great relationship with communist china.
In addition to the risks cited by the premier (cost, supply chain volatility, and the investment required), there are other even more extraordinary risks, both to the environment and to anyone nearby, that come with an LNG facility. A very bad idea for Cayman.
https://www.gexcon.com/resources/blog/the-7-essential-hazards-in-lng-facilities/
DUH Hon. Premier! But you just showed how flimsy you are…again. Flip-Flops how unprepared your Government is.
It should be compulsory for every inch of every roof in Cayman to be covered with solar panels. They are now relatively cheap and make electricity for virtually nothing. It is a criminal that CUC and CIG drag their feet.
“Its own plan in 2022 was for government and its partners to be the majority owner of utility-scale renewable plants, with the utility paid to operate and maintain all of them.”
Does no one recall that the then-Premier Wayne Panton announced this at a conference in Miami alongside James Whittaker one week after the regulator started trying to procure utility-scale solar back in April 2022? And then his government never actually committed this to an official policy, but instead set back OfReg through indecision? Peter Gough, the interim CEO at OfReg at the time had to clarify that there was no actual policy directive from government.
It is a shame most of the related records would likely be exempted under FOI, as it would be illuminating to see who talked to who and why, four years later, progress is still stalled.
“Had it gone ahead then, Grand Cayman would likely already be above 50% renewable today and largely insulated from the fuel shocks on everyone’s bill,” he claimed.
Had OfReg gone ahead without the political interference at that time, the irony is that this probably would be true.
CUC does everything it can to make solar impractical and inefficient.
There is no negative regulatory disincentive to propel CUC away from it’s fruitful and profit-guaranteeed client relationship with SOL. There is no competition allowed to bust in, and shake things up. Any expansion in grid-scale solar has been previously executed at 4-5x cost and reinvoiced to consumers at a 30% margin. Ofreg seem to believe they are a client service desk that work for the licensed utility operators and not as a government regulator officiating quality, modernization, good value, and proper service, on behalf of the people of the Cayman Islands.
you lost me at “Since the country can’t seem to get switching to solar to happen”
The government controls the regulator which controls the solar billing structure and rates. Those rates are the reason for poor ROI and therefor zero adoption.
Have a backbone and implement net zero, or cost of solar pricing by law and it will tick up.
One of the biggest VPs of CUC who talks endlessly about how great CORE is, just build an enormous house across the street from me: not a single solar panel to be found.
So if it’s such a great deal…why do CUC staff and executives not use it???
i win i had ‘u-turn’ on my Cayman politics bingo card today
Whittaker, as usual, is right. The failings – on something so fundamental and key to the cost of living – appear frightening.
At the very least – start putting solar above large government car parks, and on rooftops of large government buildings. Install batteries – and then take whole buildings offline. Do it one at a time and do it now. That seems to fall within the existing legal framework and would start saving government, the Islands’ largest consumer of electricity, on its own bills.
The public would quickly be better off.
Private sector schools and warehouses can start doing the same. Anyone with a big roof and/or big car-park!
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