ST. CROIX — On Monday a candid interview with Kyle Fleming was released on YouTube. By Friday Fleming was replaced as the director of the Virgin Islands Energy Office by its assistant director, Michael Jaffurs, albeit in an acting capacity.
No reason was given for Fleming’s departure, and a call to Government House’s director of communications was not returned as of publication time.
Fleming served as VIEO director for the past eight years of Governor Albert Bryan Jr.’s administration, and during that entire period, he was also a member of the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority’s board of directors, serving as its chair from July 29, 2021 to June 27, 2024.
While at the 18th Caribbean Renewable Energy Forum held in mid-October in Panama, Fleming was a guest on “The GSI Podcast with Dr. Wayne Archibald,” during which he criticized policies, decisions, and accountability in the territory’s energy system.
During the interview, Fleming said the territory’s energy decisions had failed to deliver expected results, noting that new power generation installed on St. Thomas before he joined the Energy Office has not been reaping the anticipated rewards.
“The results of those projects haven’t been what was anticipated, what was projected, what was promised, and that’s a real challenge that still exists today,” he said, adding that the good news is that the federal government continues to invest in “our mistakes.”
WATCH: “The GSI Podcast with Dr. Wayne Archibald,” featuring Kyle Fleming
Fleming linked the territory’s energy challenges to a decision to use a fuel mixture that he said, “may not have been as well thought out.”
With the Virgin Islands receiving federal disaster recovery funds to improve its energy grid, Fleming said many of the people making decisions about new generation were also involved in earlier choices that failed to deliver expected results.
“I think that’s something that if we thought more about, we touch on like the next administration coming in but I think a really key differentiator what happens next is who’s ultimately making the decisions and ultimately who’s being held accountable for those decisions that get made,” Fleming said.
As candidates campaign ahead of the November 3 general election and prioritize fixing the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority, Fleming said they should focus less on unrealistic quick wins as strategies previously promised were not delivered.
“We’ve been told that propane was going to solve all our problems; it hasn’t,” he said. “We’ve been told that new Wärtsiläs was going to solve all of our problems; they haven’t. We’ve been told that once the solar comes on fuel’s going to become less of an issue.”
He continued that the PSC just approved a rate hike, however, WAPA is still heavily burdened despite these heavy investments.
“Where I think the real platform should be is that hey, all these strategies that everybody’s been told to sit and wait, even now when they come to fruition, they aren’t realized,” he said. “It’s not as sexy, or its strategies aren’t as sexy as ribbon cuttings and the tangible results I think people want to see. But I think we have to start really challenging the way that we’ve been approaching this energy transition in the Virgin Islands. This reactionary approach, this everything is a rushed decision because we don’t have the time to think out what we need. I think that’s a better platform for a candidate to have, but I also get that that may not register votes in the same way.”
Fleming criticized the territory’s use of government subsidies to offset rising fuel costs.
The Virgin Islands approach has almost celebrated subsidy as a policy,” he said, noting that doing so can undermine WAPA’s financial stability and reduce pressure to improve operations.
He went on to say that the Virgin Islands has kept utility rates relatively static, shielding customers from rising fuel costs and operational inefficiencies while reducing pressure to hold those accountable who are not running the business well. He also said that reliance on federal funding can create a safe scenario for poor decisions, contrasting that approach with Caribbean financing models that require projects to demonstrate financial returns and viability.
“When you just have the federal government coming in and essentially creating this safety net for lack of due diligence, poor decision making, like the result is, I think the Virgin and Puerto Rico to some extent is kind of the perfect case study of how it doesn’t actually work as well as it sounds,” Fleming said.
