Puerto Rico and Renewable Energy

All hurricanes that make landfall in the U.S. and the Caribbean have one thing in common: they are energized and thus made more destructive by our changing climate, i.e., warmer air and water, as they cross the Atlantic.  Yet the nature and extent of the wreckage that each one causes is unique.

Hurricane Maria, the storm that wiped out Puerto Rico last September, for example, completely devastated its victims’ power grid. Now, months after the storm, more than half of the island is still without power.  (This is a failure in disaster relief completely unprecedented in the history of the United States and its territories, though that’s another matter.)

If there is a bright side to this, it lies in the opportunity to rethink our approach to building an electrical grid, since restoring power to Puerto Rico means reconstruction from the ground up.  In turn, that raises some interesting questions, e.g., do we simply have to repeat the past?  Before the storm, Puerto Rico relied largely on burning oil to generate electricity, which is both extremely dirty and horrifically; electricity prices were twice what we experience in most of the 50 states.  What about renewables?

Here’s an article that suggests capitalizing on Puerto Rico’s geographical advantages: lots of sunshine, and fairly steady, powerful trade winds.

As my grandfather used to say, “Anything worth doing is worth doing well.”  Rethinking Puerto Rico’s grid has the potential to be a great application of that wonderful maxim.