Energy Independence on The Tradewinds Brief

DOMLEC Begins Commissioning of Dominica's Geothermal Plant — and the Decade-Long Energy Bet Finally Reaches the Power Grid

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Dominica Electricity Services has begun the commissioning process for the long-awaited geothermal power plant, the company advised customers this week. The commissioning sequence is the operational bridge between a renewable-energy project that has been under construction for the better part of a decade and the moment when Dominica’s electricity grid actually receives geothermal megawatts at scale.

The geothermal bet matters disproportionately for Dominica’s economic and political positioning. Caribbean island electricity systems run primarily on imported diesel and bunker fuel. That structural dependency is what makes Caribbean electricity expensive, vulnerable to global oil-price spikes, and tied to whichever shipping routes bring the fuel into port. Geothermal — using subsurface heat from the volcanic geology that already defines Dominica’s landscape — is the most durable response any Caribbean state has tried at meaningful scale. Costa Rica has done it. Iceland has done it. Dominica is now within months of doing it.

Drew's Energy Bet: 50 Megawatts of Solar, Nevis Geothermal, and a Federation Trying to Walk Off the Oil Bill

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

At the 2026 Labour Day rally in Basseterre, Prime Minister Dr. Terrance Drew used a chunk of his keynote address to talk about something most Caribbean leaders only mention in passing: how the federation actually intends to generate its electricity over the next decade.

The headline numbers are a 50-megawatt solar project for St. Kitts and the parallel geothermal development on Nevis. Together, if both come online as planned, they would push the federation past the threshold that separates a country still buying its baseload from international suppliers from a country that has built its own.

Skerrit Pins Fuel Hikes on the Strait of Hormuz — and Dominica's Geothermal Bet Suddenly Reads Differently

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit told Dominicans this week what every Caribbean head of government is having to tell their citizens this month: the fuel hike at the pump has very little to do with anything happening on this island, and everything to do with shipping lanes thousands of miles away.

Brent crude settled above $114 per barrel earlier in May, the highest 2026 close to date, after Washington launched a new operation aimed at restoring tanker flow through the Strait of Hormuz. West Texas Intermediate followed. Every importer of refined product in the hemisphere is now passing those increases on to retail. There is no Caribbean energy ministry with the leverage to insulate its consumers from that shock — not the way the math currently works, not without a level of public subsidy nobody’s treasury can sustain.