Politico’s Gloria Gonzalez, with support from the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Fund for Environmental Journalism, takes a deep dive into Puerto Rico’s perennial energy problems, and the roles of Donald Trump, Bad Bunny, and LUMA Energy in the crisis.
Puerto Rico has the least reliable energy system of any place in the U.S. Puerto Ricans experience about 15 percent more service interruptions and about 21 percent longer outages than their fellow Americans on the mainland. Aside from the widespread New Year’s Eve and storm-related blackouts, the island is prone to regional and local outages when equipment fails, as it did in early June in the southern part of Puerto Rico. The territory also suffers from frequent power losses due to shortfalls in available energy — the grid manager reported supply shortages caused the power to be turned off to certain areas 115 times last year. These shutoffs are done to avoid a catastrophic failure of Puerto Rico’s fragile system.
But for Puerto Ricans living on the island, those constant power outages are the catastrophe.
Puerto Rico’s power failures affect every aspect of life for the 3.2 million American citizens living in the territory. It interrupts their ability to work and support their families. It disrupts their access to health care and education. It wreaks havoc on efforts to build more affordable housing and expand farming programs so Puerto Rico is less dependent on imported food.
Add this story to the long list of articles covering the issue, that somehow, still has no solution in sight.
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