SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has canceled solar projects in Puerto Rico worth millions of dollars, even as the island struggles with chronic power outages and a crumbling electric grid.
The canceled projects aimed to help 30,000 low-income families in rural areas across the U.S. territory as part of a now-fading transition toward renewable energy.
In an email obtained by The Associated Press, the U.S. Energy Department expressed concerns that a push under Puerto Rico’s former governor for a 100% renewable future threatened the reliability of the island’s energy system.
“The Puerto Rico grid cannot afford to run on more distributed solar power,” the department’s message stated. “The rapid, widespread deployment of rooftop solar has created fluctuations in Puerto Rico’s grid, leading to unacceptable instability and fragility.”
However, Javier Rúa Jovet, public policy director for Puerto Rico’s Solar and Energy Storage Association, disputed that claim in a phone interview.
He said approximately 200,000 families across Puerto Rico rely on solar power, which generates close to 1.4 gigawatts of energy daily for the rest of the island. “That’s helping avoid blackouts,” Rúa Jovet said, adding that the inverters of those systems also help regulate fluctuations across the grid.
Expressing his disappointment, he called the cancellation of the solar projects “a tragedy.” “These are funds for the most needy,” he added.
Earlier this month, the Energy Department canceled three programs, including one worth $400 million, which would have installed solar and battery storage systems in low-income homes and those with medical needs.
According to the department’s email, on January 9, it planned to reallocate up to $350 million from private distributed solar systems to support fixes aimed at improving power generation in Puerto Rico. It remains unclear if that funding has since been allocated.
One program would have financed solar projects for 150 low-income households on the small Puerto Rican island of Culebra.
“The people are really upset and angry,” said Dan Whittle, associate vice president with the Environmental Defense Fund, which was overseeing that project. “They’re seeing other people keep the lights on during these power outages, and they’re not sure why they’re not included.”
Whittle noted that a privately funded project installed solar panels and batteries on 45 homes just a week before Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico in September 2022. He expressed bafflement at the federal government’s decision.
“They are buying hook, line, and sinker that solar is the problem. It could not be more wrong,” he said.
These solar projects were part of an initial $1 billion fund created by the U.S. Congress in 2022 under former President Joe Biden to help boost energy resilience in Puerto Rico, which is still recovering from Hurricane Maria.
The Category 4 storm devastated the island in September 2017, destroying an already weakened electric grid, which suffered from years of a lack of maintenance and investment. Since then, power outages have persisted, with massive blackouts striking on New Year’s Eve 2024 and during Holy Week last year.
In recent years, residents and businesses able to afford solar energy have increasingly embraced it on an island of 3.2 million people with a poverty rate exceeding 40%. However, more than 60% of Puerto Rico’s energy is still generated by petroleum-fired power plants, 24% by natural gas, 8% by coal, and only 7% by renewables, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The cancellation of the solar projects comes just a month after the administration of Puerto Rico Governor Jenniffer González sued Luma Energy, the private company overseeing the transmission and distribution of power on the island.
At the time, Governor González criticized the electrical system’s performance, stating it “has not improved with the speed, consistency or effectiveness that Puerto Rico deserves.”
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/trump-administration-scraps-multimillion-dollar-solar-projects-puerto-129474251