Limited landmass significantly restricts Bermuda’s potential to fuel itself using inshore solar energy, a Belco official has said.

Jeffrey Steynor, Belco’s director of energy transmission and business development, addressed questions by The Royal Gazette after a town hall meeting at the plant this week led by the company’s president and senior managers.

Dr Steynor said while some land locations could be viable for solar power, along with panels on public and private buildings, models showed that panels on the ocean presented the better option.

Belco’s preferred portfolio in its integrated resource plan for energy generation up to 2050 seeks to install 20 megawatts of inshore solar annually over four years from 2025.

Its long-term plan calls for installing 70 megawatts of floating solar. The IRP also suggests battery storage installation.

Offshore wind as well as biomass energy are on the table, subject to approval by the Regulatory Authority, which put out an expression of interest for floating solar developers this week.

Liquefied natural gas, a fossil fuel, was presented as a pivot strategy by Belco to satisfy demand not met by renewables.

Dr Steynor said: “Around the airport, there is a large area. We have limited land and that’s where to put it.

“You can add a little more to the solar finger — there’s room for expansion.

“Brownfield sites are a challenge because if you put it on top, just float it, it’s fine, but if you penetrate the ground you need to remediate first.”

He said brownfield sites, which typically came with trees and wildlife, were also “not necessarily flat and facing the right direction”.

He added: “East of Morgan’s Point, there is a massive bit of land there.

“In the IRP, we limited it to 20 megawatts because that’s the land that we saw feasible that could have solar for utility.

“Home installation is 200 megawatts. Something like that it is a bit of a challenge — you have got to look at every roof.”

Nadir Wade, Belco’s managing director, told the audience during the town hall: “Bermuda is very densely populated, we don’t shy away from that.

“The reality is we are very small. We don’t have a lot of land, which is also becoming a problem in terms of executing on our renewable strategy as a country.

“It’s not just a fossil fuel problem; it is also an energy transition challenge but we are here to meet the opportunity.”

Belco’s IRP proposal puts the cost of LNG infrastructure in the region of $150 million based on a 2016 feasibility study by consultant Castilla and adjusted for factors such as inflation.

Dr Steynor said models showed LNG would be cheaper than the liquid fuel used at present.

The cost for wind energy alone, estimated at $450 million, would only account for a third of requirements.

He acknowledged that costs for solar were declining but said they could “fluctuate back up too with building supply chains”.

He added: “When you take all the portfolios that Belco has analysed, the more renewables you add, the more expensive it gets.”

The Gazette recently reported on Bermuda’s discussions with Blue Planet Alliance, a Hawaiian non-profit aimed at getting the islands on 100 per cent renewable energy by 2045.

The Hawaiian island of Kauai, with a population of 74,000, already generates 100 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources on certain days and is targeting the 2045 goal.

The BPA claims that solar energy will only get cheaper and customers will not be landed with the variable costs associated with some fossil fuels.

Representatives from Belco, the RA, the Government and environmental charity Greenrock accepted an invitation to a five-day conference in May 2024 exploring how islands could make the switch.

Dr Steynor said: “We have consulted with some of the Hawaiian university experts and Nadir [Wade] went there. We brought them to Bermuda and they presented the same data.

“There are two islands that have the same population in Hawaii so people always choose the piece of information they like.

“There’s another island with the same population as Bermuda and a similar size but its prices haven’t changed.

“It’s all about how you construct the framework, the pricing and making sure the space is used correctly.

“In Hawaii, they said the biggest challenge for Bermuda is space. It’s the hardest problem to solve.”