Now that the end is in sight for resolving the territorial differendum between Guatemala and Belize, could it be time for the two countries to think about an electricity interconnection? At the Fourth Ministerial Meeting of the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas (ECPA), Guatemala said it would like to sit down with its neighbor and talk about it.

The vast majority of people in Latin America and the Caribbean—over 96% of them, according to most estimates—have access to electricity. In some corners of the region, it may not yet be as reliable, affordable, sustainable, or modern as it should be, but as a rule, people can turn on the lights. That is not the case for most people in Haiti. With 60% to 70% of the population still without electricity, the government is pursuing an “aggressive” strategy to overhaul the power sector and improve access and quality throughout the country.

What does it mean to build resilient infrastructure—and who’s going to pay for it? On the sidelines of the Fourth Ministerial Meeting of the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas (ECPA), representatives of the public and private sector talked about how to make the region’s energy systems less vulnerable to disruption and better prepared for contingencies.

Diversification. Flexibility. Integration. Versatility. Nimbleness. These are just a few of the objectives that countries across the Americas are pursuing as they strive to become more energy-resilient and climate-smart. How best to do that was the focus of the Fourth Ministerial Meeting of the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas (ECPA), held in Montego Bay, Jamaica—which for two days in February was, as Prime Minister Andrew Holness put it, “the most energetic place on Earth.”