"Eight months after Hurricane Maria damaged 80 percent of Puerto Rico’s electricity grid, energy expert Lionel Orama-Exclusa talks to Yale Environment 360 about how the island is missing an opportunity to transform its energy system from fossil fuels to renewable sources."
"When Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico last September, the storm’s 155 mile-per-hour winds tore apart the island’s infrastructure, killing thousands of people and leaving the entire island without electricity, in some cases for months. In the wake of the storm, renewable energy proponents and the media observed that the island’s devastation provided a unique opportunity to rebuild Puerto Rico as a resilient community powered largely by renewable energy.
One of the most vocal advocates for transforming the country’s post-Maria energy system has been Lionel Orama-Exclusa, an engineer and sustainable energy expert at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. But to the chagrin of Orama-Exclusa and others, in the eight months since the storm, the island has made almost no headway in laying the foundation for a renewable energy economy. Although government officials have given lip service to microgrids and renewables, “there’s no building back better anywhere you look,” says Orama-Exclusa. He lamented that in late May the director of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) was touting continued carbon generation using coal and “totally dropping the possibility of renewables because he said renewables are so expensive.”"
Katherine Bagley reports for Yale Environment 360 May 31, 2018.
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