How US policies and perceptions impact Puerto Rico’s energy infrastructure

Northeastern College chemistry professor Eugene Smotkin was in his house within the Puerto Rican residential district of Outdated San Juan when he, like greater than one million different residents on the island, misplaced energy on New 12 months’s Eve.

He and his spouse first seen the ability went out when the ceiling fan above their mattress stopped.

Smotkin considers himself among the many extra lucky—his energy was restored later that afternoon. Different much less tourist-centric areas have been hit more durable by the outage and it brought on complications for a lot of making ready for celebrations.

“This became a mess for Puerto Ricans in general,” he says. “We didn’t know if we were going to have power on New Year’s Day.”

Practically all residents have had their energy restored, based on Luma Vitality, the non-public Canadian energy firm that manages and operates the territory’s electrical grid. Rolling blackouts will doubtless happen because the system is absolutely introduced again on-line.

Blackout not an anomaly

However Tuesday’s blackout was not an anomaly as Puerto Rico has been stricken by energy outage points for years, explains Smotkin, who focuses on finding out supplies used for clean energy and was featured in an award-winning Northeastern Movies documentary on bringing renewable vitality sources to Puerto Rico.

“We have had a power failure each week for the previous few months,” Smotkin says, highlighting that a lot of the territory’s electrical grid gear is greater than 40 years outdated and continues to be crippled by storms like Hurricane Maria in 2017 and Hurricane Ernie in 2024.

“As a result, the grid remains highly vulnerable, with power failures occurring frequently—even in San Juan, the capital city,” he says.

Whereas the reason for the newest outage continues to be below investigation, Luma officers say preliminary findings counsel {that a} defective underground electrical line situated within the south of the island could also be in charge, according to the Associated Press.

Smotkin says a lot of Puerto Rico’s electrical points come right down to its place within the eyes of the US.

Notion on the US mainland

“We need to modify the perception of what Puerto Rico is among U.S. citizens,” Smotkin says. “It is an unincorporated territory, and there’s huge misperception among the U.S. citizens about who we are and what the status of Puerto Rico is.”

Laura Kuhl, a Northeastern professor of public coverage and concrete affairs and worldwide affairs, has spent a lot of her profession finding out Puerto Rico’s local weather and vitality infrastructure.

She echoes Smotkin’s sentiment.

“One of my big picture takeaways coming out of this power outage is that it’s impossible to understand anything about energy policy in Puerto Rico without acknowledging how much of its colonial relationship impacts all decision-making and all aspects of daily life,” she says.

Puerto Rico—which has been in a major debt disaster for years—doesn’t have the authorized choices that states or municipalities should file for chapter or restructure debt to handle public utilities, she provides.

As an alternative, Puerto Rico has the Monetary Oversight & Administration Board, a federal physique composed of out of doors authorities—not elected by residents of the territory—that’s charged with approving Puerto Rico’s price range. For years, due to Puerto Rico’s excessive poverty charges and non-revenue-generating electrical service, the territory was unable to afford upkeep of the grid, Kuhl explains.

Determination to denationalise the grid

After Hurricane Maria devastated the territory in 2017, a call was made to denationalise {the electrical} grid in hopes of enhancing providers. In 2021, Luma Vitality was employed for the job, however the grid continues to be unreliable.

“The hope was that this would generate more economic efficiencies in the running of the grid, but that has not been what Puerto Ricans have experienced. Outages continue to be very common,” Kuhl says.

Puerto Rico’s electrical grid is a really centralized top-down system, Kuhl says, making it significantly weak if even one a part of the system goes down. Add this on prime of years of a scarcity of funding to correctly preserve the grid, and frequent energy outages should not shocking.

“In contrast, if Puerto Rico had, for example, a lot of renewable energy sources where the generation was more distributed, even individual outages wouldn’t have those widespread repercussions,” Kohl says.

In 2019, Puerto Rico passed a major energy law with the aim of changing into 100% vitality renewable by 2050. As of 2025, solely 7% of the grid makes use of renewable vitality, based on Kuhl.

New Puerto Rican Gov. Jenniffer González Colón says an vitality czar can be employed to supervise the scenario and her administration is seeking to exchange Luma. She can be calling for the rollback of some of the clean energy targets and as a substitute investing extra in pure fuel.

Funding from FEMA

One other main concern is that Puerto Rico has to enhance {the electrical} grid, however funding from the U.S. Federal Emergency Administration Company is restricted and may solely be used for upkeep and never for upgrades, Smotkin says.

The territory’s electrical points are made much more tough by the Jones Act, a legislation handed in 1920 requiring that cargo, together with oil, should be transported between U.S. ports on U.S. vessels, based on Smotkin.

“Any fuel that we purchase must go on a merchant marine ship, which inflates the price,” says Smotkin. “This sort of creates a monopoly that the United States has in Puerto Rico. … We’re paying more money for energy—23.77 cents per kilowatt hour. That’s 41% higher than what people pay in the (mainland) U.S.”

This story is republished courtesy of Northeastern World Information news.northeastern.edu.