Having suffered for decades from natural disasters, perverse federal policies, local mismanagement and much more, the people of Puerto Rico are in need of reforms in many dimensions, prominent among them a modernized, efficient and reliable electric power system.
And that need is more-or-less immediate, as the rickety commonwealth electricity system finally is operating, however inefficiently, after hurricanes in 2017 and a powerful earthquake in 2020 inflicted weeks and months of interrupted electricity service for many thousands of Puerto Rico residents. One would think that modernization of the system as quickly as possible would be uppermost on the minds of public officials, with lower costs and greater reliability foremost among objectives.
But one would be wrong. In a classic exercise in misplaced priorities, 17 members of Congress have written to the Federal Emergency Management Agency demanding that FEMA financial support for the reconstruction of the Puerto Rico electricity system be used “to promote the installation of… renewable energy sources, including photovoltaic and battery energy storage systems and rooftop and onsite solar…”