In 2023, Barbados depended on fossil fuels for about 92% of its electricity consumption, while low-carbon electricity supplied just 8%, entirely from solar. Gas accounted for around 3% of total electricity consumption and was included within the fossil share. This leaves considerable room to expand clean electricity and reduce reliance on fossil fuels, along with their climate and air-pollution impacts.

Is Electricity Growing in Barbados?

Electricity consumption per person in Barbados remained below its historic peak in 2023. It reached about 3,900 kWh per person, roughly 180 kWh, or 5%, below the 2012 record of about 4,100 kWh. That comparison does not establish whether consumption grew in the latest year, but it shows that the earlier peak has not been regained. Encouragingly, low-carbon generation reached a new record of 319 kWh per person, around 12% above the previous record of 284 kWh in 2021. Barbados needs to build on that clean-electricity growth to support further electrification and future demand.

Suggestions

Barbados should prioritize expanding solar electricity, including rooftop installations, supported by storage and grid improvements. Relevant island examples include Cyprus, where solar supplies about 24% of electricity, and the US state of Hawaii, where it supplies 23%. Wind could complement solar: Cape Verde generates about 14% of its electricity from wind, demonstrating its contribution in another island setting. Barbados should also consider nuclear electricity as part of its long-term clean-electricity planning, including assessing appropriately scaled options and international partnerships. France and Slovakia, which generate roughly two-thirds of their electricity from nuclear, demonstrate its potential to supply substantial amounts of low-carbon electricity, even though their electricity systems differ greatly from Barbados’s.

History

From 2014 through 2023, the supplied historical series records a solar-generation change of 0 TWh in every year. At the reported precision, this shows no measurable annual additions across the decade—a disappointing lack of visible progress in that series. However, these rounded figures do not establish that solar generation was literally unchanged: small increases can disappear when expressed in TWh. The record low-carbon generation per person in 2023 therefore provides a more encouraging signal, and finer-resolution generation data would help reveal the pace of Barbados’s solar expansion.

Electricity Imports and Exports

Balance of Trade