Column: Lightbourne On Electricity Reform
[Opinion column written by Minister Alexa Lightbourne]
This week the Senate passed the Electricity Amendment Act 2026, days after it cleared the House of Assembly. The law builds affordability as part of the plan for Bermuda’s power. It also gives the Minister a narrow, public-interest power to pause and reset the planning process when that process shifts from the policy the people elected.
A power bill is a household responsibility. It informs the choice a senior makes between the light on at night and purchasing needed medication. It tells a small business owner whether to keep the doors open or which staff they may need to cut. The cost of electricity in Bermuda has hardened into a structure over many years, and the people asked this Government to change it.
The record provides our evidence. In 2019, Bermuda set a target of roughly 85 per cent renewable generation by 2035. That promise has not been kept. Renewable supply remains low, and households still pay one of the highest electricity rates in the region. This is because almost our power begins as oil, shipped across the ocean, and priced by a market we do not control.
In the autumn of 2023, a sudden rate rise sent families into the street in protest, and the rebate that rewarded clean energy investment was cut at the same time. The families who live closest to the power station have carried soot on their homes for years. After the entire island lost its lights, the answers took years to arrive. Hotels have now had their relief reversed. Just check the public record. These are the costs Bermuda has already paid. So who are we protecting?
This week’s debate made the problem plain for the public to see. The utility has said openly that it does not accept the changes, and it has warned of “ministerial interference” in a process it argues should stay at arm’s length. The utility has also told the island that its business and Bermuda’s interest are one and the same.
Here is where the line must be honest.
An entity answers to the owners who hold it, and that is respected. Bermuda and its interests must come first.
A responsible government answers to the people who elect it. An entity will act in its own commercial interest, and there is nothing improper in that.
The duty of an elected government runs only one way, to the public. The structure set in 2015 and 2016 was built around an entity with entrenched Bermudian interest. For too long, one entity’s voice has remained the loudest. That is the imbalance this law works to correct.
When planning works against the policy the public has chosen, the work is done twice, the delay compounds, and the bill increases. Industry set against the settled direction of the people serves no one, and it will drive the price of power higher.
The Ministry of Home Affairs does not claim to be the engineer or the regulator. The Regulatory Authority is empowered to regulate, and it will remain so.. The utility builds, runs, and maintains the grid that work depends on. The Government’s task is to set the public’s direction and to keep the plan honest to the people who pay for it. Each part and every stakeholder matters. None can carry the whole alone.
We are not the first island to face this. Jurisdictions with our exact constraints, small isolated grids and high costs, have expanded clean power, opened the sector to competition, and delivered real savings to ordinary customers. Kauai did it. Uruguay did it. Their results show what is possible. Bermuda’s plan must still be authored in Bermuda and sized for Bermuda, for our grid, our economy, and our people.
The National Electricity Sector Policy is nearly final. We are rightsizing the transition and rebuilding the planning process on the right foundation, with affordability written in from the start.
Everyone who depends on power has a stake in what comes next; international business and the hospital, hotels and restaurants, shops and small businesses, schools and care homes, builders, farmers and fishers, the unions and the churches, and every household, the seniors and struggling families most of all. We will not rest until the bill is fair. We will not rest until the grid holds through the storm. We will not rest until the cleaner power Bermuda was promised finally arrives.
This work belongs to the whole island. To every company that serves us, every parish, and every household that carries the bill. It belongs to all of us. We will rebuild Bermuda’s energy future the way this island has always built what lasts. Brick by brick, together.
- Alexa Lightbourne, MP for Constituency #14, Devonshire North West, and Minister of Home Affairs
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