With 33 brand-new electric buses now crisscrossing the island, Barbados is moving full speed ahead in modernizing its public transit fleet and reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. Passengers love the fringe benefits—for starters, the buses are air conditioned—but they are still getting used to one big change: the absence of noise.

Natural gas has some clear advantages over diesel or heavy fuel oil—it’s cleaner to burn and less expensive—but it has not always been a practical option for small countries. That is changing. Innovations in technology, advances in logistics, investments in infrastructure, and strong market forces mean that liquefied natural gas (LNG) can now be economically viable on a very small scale, opening up new prospects for power generation, transportation, and industry in Central America and the Caribbean.