Nearly a decade after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico’s electric grid, community and environmental advocates are pushing the federal government to help advance solar energy to protect against future storm damage.
Now, a federal judge is backing their case.
It’s a tough sell under the Trump administration, which has already announced it is reallocating funding for rooftop solar programs to harden the existing fossil fuel-based grid. Meanwhile, billions of dollars in federal disaster aid for Puerto Rico’s recovery from Hurricane Maria remain unspent.
This month, a federal judge in Puerto Rico ruled that the Federal Emergency Management Agency should have considered solar power as part of the agency’s analysis for how it would distribute federal grant funding for rebuilding Puerto Rico’s storm-battered electrical grid.
The decision from the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico was a hopeful sign for some solar advocates that the government may have to at least consider solar — even as the Trump administration moves in another direction.
“It’s expected that FEMA will now change course,” said Ruth Santiago, a community and environmental attorney in Puerto Rico. She is part of the legal team that submitted comments on FEMA’s National Environmental Policy Act review of its emergency grant funds on behalf of community and environmental organizations. Attorneys for the Center for Biological Diversity filed suit against FEMA in federal court.
Santiago added that the agency is now required “to work with the Puerto Rican government to prepare a full-blown environmental impact statement that considers these other alternatives.”
The court’s decision is a boost for Puerto Rico’s clean energy targets, including its goal of reaching 100 percent renewable energy by 2050.
But a new NEPA review doesn’t guarantee action. The procedural statute requires that an agency adequately consider alternatives — it doesn’t require them to adopt those alternatives.
FEMA could also fight the ruling. The agency did not respond to a request for comment on whether it would file an appeal.
Justice Department attorneys had argued in court briefs that further analysis of alternatives for rebuilding the island’s grid was “not warranted,” and that the alleged harms from relying on fossil fuels were too attenuated from FEMA’s funding decisions to give Comité Dialogo Ambiental and other groups opposing the plan standing to sue.
The need for a more flexible grid became especially clear following devastating storms within the past decade. In 2017, less than two weeks after Hurricane Irma struck Puerto Rico, Hurricane Maria damaged or destroyed about 80 percent of the U.S. territory’s electrical grid and killed about 3,000 people. Subsequent storms, including Hurricane Fiona, put added stress on the electrical system.
Today, the island still faces higher death rates after long power outages, and unreliable electrical service often damages appliances and pushes people and businesses to leave Puerto Rico, said Santiago.
“Hurricane Maria is a sign of things to come with climate change and having power generated much closer to where it’s being used is what people really need in an emergency,” said Cathy Kunkel, an energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
She noted that many of the thousands of deaths that occurred in the wake of Hurricane Maria were due to factors like an inability to refrigerate medication or hospitals not having power.
“It really is a matter of life and death,” she said. “I would hate to see Puerto Rico in a situation where it rebuilds the same grid it had before.”
Trump diverts solar funds
The same week a federal judge instructed FEMA to consider solar in its NEPA analysis, the Department of Energy announced it would reallocate hundreds of millions of dollars away from solar technology.
Instead of funding rooftop solar and battery storage installations set to begin next year, the $365 million would be used to foot the bill for repairs and emergency measures to stabilize and harden the current fossil fuel-based grid, DOE said.
In a footnote of its announcement, the agency stated that the change in funding would benefit “millions of people rather than thousands and generate a higher return on investment for taxpayers more immediately.”
The reallocated money was part of $1 billion Puerto Rico Energy Resilience Fund offered by DOE’s Grid Deployment Office in 2023, following consultation with local communities. The funds were intended to pay for renewable energy for low-income people with special energy needs, like powering ventilators or other kinds of medical equipment, said Santiago, who testified before Congress about the funding in 2022.
FEMA, meanwhile, still has emergency aid funding that could go to solar development.
According to a report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General, as of February, about 60 percent (or $5.8 billion) of $9.5 billion in FEMA funding for permanent grid repair work had been obligated to 198 projects.
Most of those projects — about 92 percent — had not been completed, the OIG report found.
Fortifying Puerto Rico’s grid
The Trump administration isn’t the only obstacle to solar development in Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rico’s government has also been very pro-natural gas. Its decision to privatize management of the grid through grid operator Luma Energy and power plant operator Genera PR also slowed recovery efforts, as both companies have had to learn to run Puerto Rico’s energy system, advocates said.
Neither Luma Energy nor Genera PR responded by press time to a request for comment on the pace of their grid recovery efforts.
Solar energy is still growing on the island, even with these hurdles, but advocates warned that Puerto Rico might not be able to expand renewable energy much more without additional government assistance.
A report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis found that both residential and rooftop solar had quintupled in the last four years. And about 12 percent of Puerto Rico’s residential customers get their power from rooftop solar, totaling more than 163,000 installations.
Distributed solar has distinct advantages on the island, which is split by a central mountain range. Power generation for the highly centralized system is located in the south, but most of the population is located in the northern half of the island.
Solar uptake may start to taper off, as the cost of installing solar panels and battery storage is cost prohibitive for many who live on the island.
A solar array and battery cost about $30,000, said Kunkel. The median household income in Puerto Rico is around $25,000 per year, according to 2023 data from the U.S Census Bureau.
“We’re seeing this uptick in rooftop solar and storage, but in reality, it is creating this segregated system where people who can afford to do it are doing it,” Kunkel said. “People who can’t afford it are stuck with this unreliable grid.”
The federal government could help bridge that gap, she said. Federal funding could also help update the electric grid’s distribution system so that the voltage of the grid does not fluctuate too much, preventing solar systems from sending power into the grid.
“Puerto Rico can be a more viable place if the electric system is transformed to better serve the public interest,” said Santiago. “Civil society in Puerto Rico has put forth proposals for the necessary transformation of the electric system that the government agencies should take seriously.”
