Navigating the Complexities of Energy Security: Adaptive Governance in the Caribbean

Understanding Energy Security Challenges

Earlier this year, the UK and the International Energy Agency convened energy ministers from over 60 countries. The goal was to address a pressing reality: global energy security has become significantly more complex. Traditionally, energy security was defined by four pillars—availability, accessibility, acceptability, and affordability. Today, it faces profound and evolving threats.

Energy insecurity manifests in various overlapping ways, including:

• Political instability in energy-producing regions.

• Attacks on critical energy infrastructure, such as pipelines and power grids.

• Over-reliance on a limited number of energy sources or suppliers.

• Extreme weather events and natural disasters that damage infrastructure.

• Price manipulation by state actors or corporations.

  
  

Corroborating anecdotes suggest that global energy infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks. Energy supply chains are exposed to geopolitical tensions and climate-related disruptions. Energy security has become a moving target. This shifting risk landscape is particularly consequential for small island developing states, such as those in the Caribbean. The region’s energy systems—largely centralized, fossil-dependent, and aging—are highly exposed to external shocks. Climate volatility, including hurricanes and droughts, compounds the risk of system failure.

However, energy security is no longer solely about reliable supply; it is also about adaptability. Traditional governance models—centralized, linear, and slow to respond—are ill-equipped for today’s risk environment. Designed for predictable threats (“grey rhinos”), they struggle against dynamic, compounding risks across cyber, climate, economic, and geopolitical domains.

The Need for Adaptive Governance

In response to these challenges, energy leaders are reimagining governance not as a rigid structure but as a living system. Adaptive governance—characterized by decentralization, feedback loops, institutional learning, and scenario planning—offers a strategic framework for resilience. It allows systems to evolve in real time, aligning decision-making with shifting realities.

The Shifting Landscape of Energy Security

Energy security in the Caribbean is uniquely fragile. The region imports over 90% of its primary energy, primarily fossil fuels, which exceeds the global average of 21% (World Bank). This statistic underscores the region's susceptibility to global price shocks and geopolitical supply disruptions. Infrastructure is centralized and often vulnerable to coastal and seismic risks. Isolated grids face threats from hurricanes, floods, and droughts. The 2017 hurricane season illustrated this brutally: Puerto Rico’s grid failed catastrophically, and power restoration took nearly a year in some areas.

The digitalization of energy systems—through SCADA systems, smart meters, and Internet of Things-enabled assets—has been slow. Investment in these areas relies on government revenues from tax collection to fund utility services and clean energy initiatives. These top-down systems, in which governments participate in the generation, transmission, and distribution of power, stifle innovation and competition, increasing electricity costs. Conversely, the introduction of digital systems brings cyber risks. Decisions made in other countries often have ripple effects due to territorial interdependence. For example, Russia’s war in Ukraine reduced fertilizer flows to agricultural commodity exporters, leading to escalated food prices in the Eastern Caribbean. Yet many governance frameworks remain siloed, treating digital and physical threats separately and reacting only after disruptions occur. Risk is not merely operational; it is systemic, interacting across political, climate, cyber, economic, and social domains. Energy governance must evolve accordingly.

Defining Adaptive Governance

Adaptive governance is an architecture that is iterative, inclusive, and designed to operate under deep uncertainty. It relies on several key components:

• Feedback loops: Real-time monitoring and adjustment.

• Scenario planning: Rather than predicting a single future, exploring multiple pathways.

• Decentralized decision-making: Empowering leaders to act independently when necessary.

• Institutional learning: Integrating lessons from past failures and near-misses into governance structures.

• Cross-stakeholder coordination: Aligning local, national, and regional governance bodies.

  
  

Technically, this means embedding resilience into regulatory frameworks, supply chains, asset management, and market structures—not just emergency response.

Adaptive Governance in Action: Caribbean Case Studies

1. Distributed Energy + Microgrid Regulation – Dominica

After Hurricane Maria, Dominica’s national energy strategy included developing hybrid microgrids in vulnerable communities, powered by solar-PV and small-scale hydro with integrated battery storage. The key enabler was not just technology; it was governance reform. The regulatory framework now supports independent power producers (IPPs), permits community energy models, and sets technical standards for interconnection and grid resilience.

Insight: Enabling legislation and standards are crucial for decentralized energy resilience. Adaptive governance aligns technical capability with institutional flexibility.

2. Scenario-Based Resource Planning – Jamaica

Jamaica’s 2020 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) introduced scenario modeling for fuel mix diversification, demand uncertainty, and climate impact resilience. The plan includes adaptive pathways for scaling renewables and LNG based on system stress-testing and external shocks. This shifts planning from deterministic to adaptive, allowing investment sequencing to be adjusted as conditions change.

Insight: Scenarios aren't just forecasts; they are decision tools. Adaptive IRPs allow for conditional triggers, governance checkpoints, and capital reprioritization in response to change.

3. Grid Digitalization + Cyber Preparedness – Barbados

As Barbados targets 100% renewable energy by 2030, its utility regulator is incorporating cyber-physical risk alignment into the grid code. This includes requiring redundancy in supervisory control systems, encrypted communications, and disaster recovery plans for digital infrastructure. A resilience maturity model is being piloted to guide both public and private sector investment in operational continuity.

Insight: Adaptive governance ensures that cyber and physical domains are governed as a single system. This requires standards, audits, and threat modeling embedded in energy policy.

Implications for Risk Leaders

Beyond compliance and operational continuity, risk professionals must help design adaptive capacity into the governance fabric of energy institutions. This includes:

• Empowering employees to mitigate identified risks.

• Supporting dynamic operating models and agile contracting.

• Enabling scenario-based investment frameworks.

• Advocating for real-time data to support faster feedback and decentralized risk response.

  
  

Conclusion

The Caribbean’s energy future will not be determined solely by the infrastructure it builds but by the governance systems it designs. Traditional models rooted in control, centralization, and post-crisis recovery are no longer sufficient. Instead, the region must embrace adaptive governance—a forward-looking, decentralized approach capable of managing deep uncertainty and accelerating energy transition. Adaptive governance reframes resilience as an ongoing capacity rather than a one-time response. It integrates digital and physical domains, empowers decentralized actors, and encourages regulatory and institutional agility. Importantly, it positions governance as a platform for innovation rather than a constraint.

Adaptive governance is both a strategic imperative and a practical toolkit. It offers a way to anticipate systemic shocks, embed flexibility into investment planning, and foster cross-sector coordination. In a region where disruption is the norm and development the goal, adaptive governance is the operating system for strategic resilience.

References

Caribbean Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency. (2023). Integrated resource planning in the Caribbean: Trends and case studies. CCREEE.

Folke, C., Hahn, T., Olsson, P., & Norberg, J. (2005). Adaptive governance of social-ecological systems. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 30(1), 441–473. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.energy.30.050504.144511

Inter-American Development Bank. (2021). Caribbean energy sector diagnostic. IDB.

International Energy Agency. (2025). Lancaster House Energy Security Roundtable Summary Report. IEA.

Jasanoff, S. (2004). States of knowledge: The co-production of science and the social order. Routledge.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory. (2022). Cybersecurity considerations for distributed energy resources in islanded grids. NREL.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2020). Systemic thinking for policy making: The potential of systems analysis for addressing global policy challenges in the 21st century. OECD Publishing.

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. (2022). Disaster risk governance in Small Island Developing States. UNDRR.

World Bank. (2023). World development indicators: Energy imports (% of energy use). https://data.worldbank.org