The Opposition Spokesman on Energy, Phillip Paulwell has asserted that Jamaicans are facing high energy bills because the energy sector has been mismanaged by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government over the past seven years.

According to Paulwell, during that time, the country’s energy portfolio “has suffered from the effects of bad management, instability and neglect.” The former energy minister made the assertion during his recent contribution to the 2023/24 Sectoral Debate at Gordon House.

Speaking under the theme: ‘Urgent reset for energy and mining’, Paulwell pointed out that over the past seven years with the JLP at the helm, four ministers, including the Prime Minister, have attended to this portfolio “with little or no meaningful positive changes to show”.

“Not much is happening, and every commitment given by the Administration to the people whether on renewables, Petrojam, electricity prices and legislative reform in the electricity sector has not been met. In fact, in some areas, we have experienced significant reversals,” Paulwell argued.

“Nowhere in the Ministry (of Energy) is the standstill more evident than in the provision of electricity services. Despite a policy objective of significantly increasing the ratio of renewable energy to 50 per cent against fossil fuel sources in Jamaica’s energy mix, very little has been done over the past seven years to meet the objective,” Paulwell added. He highlighted that of Jamaica’s installed capacity of 1063.46 megawatts (MW) of electricity generation, only 178.4 MW was from renewable sources such as hydro, wind and solar.

“Only 37 MW of solar has been added in seven years and that project was approved prior to the PNP (People’s National Party) demitting office in 2016. All the other large scale renewable energy projects were procured and implemented by our (PNP) Administration prior to 2016,” said Paulwell. He also cited that Jamaicans were not reaping the benefits of the switch from diesel and heavy fuel oil to liquified natural gas (LNG). He also pointed out that fuel cost on electricity bills in 2016 was US 9 cents.

“By the end of 2021 it was US 15 cents, a whopping increase of 66.6 per cent. That trend has continued into 2023,” said Paulwell.

As it relates to the non-fuel charge on electricity bills, Paulwell told his colleagues that the Office of Utilities Regulation has reported that in 2016 the non-fuel charge, (which is the cost of the transmission and distribution of electricity) was US 13 cents.

“In 2021, that jumped to US 16.26 cents. Apart from some glaring areas of inefficiency of the operations of the grid which JPSCo (Jamaica Oublic Service) must invest in to correct, the bulk of this increase is coming from an increase in the amount of electricity that is stolen. And we are being told that prosperity is upon us! Let that sink in,” Paulwell said.

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