Using Disaster to Build a New, (d)emocratic Energy Paradigm — Episode 78 of Local Energy Rules Podcast

I’m John Farrell, director of the Energy Democracy Initiative at the Institute for Local Self reliance and this is Local Energy Rules. A podcast sharing powerful stories about local, renewable energy.

I’m very excited this week to be speaking with Ingrid Vila, an engineer and president of Cambio of Puerto Rico based nonprofit who I met with in March when I had the privilege to travel to Puerto Rico for the black start conference. As many folks know. Puerto Rico was hit by a major hurricane a couple of years ago, has been in the process of rebuilding their energy system. And I have just been fascinated with the way that folks on the island have been looking for the opportunities in this rebuilding project. So Ingrid, thank you so much for joining me and welcome to the podcast.

Also, um, as many of you probably also have, have come to learn, Puerto Rico has been in economic depression since 2006. Um, and instead of, uh, you think that that situation to transform many of the government entities and in specific the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, um, what was, uh, assumed as a strategy to pursue was we’re a 30 measures and some of those are 30 measures, for example, resulted in severe reduction in labor. Um, so after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, the Puerto Rico Power Authority was incredibly understaffed in order to be able to address the many needs and the urgency of the moment. Um, and aside from that, I would also include the fact that, um, up to Hurricane Maria, I would have to say that little or no consideration was given to climate change and the impact of climate change and the vulnerability that that climate change poses on our Caribbean island. Um, and also the fact that, uh, this centralized system that we have with our power authority just not harness the power existing in our community.

And I mean both, uh, power that that is energy related and also power to drive change. So you have this centralized system that had all the responsibility to restore power, to be able to respond to the dramatic effect of this category five hurricane. And the people were not active, participants were not engaged. We’re not part of that response from a government initiative. People did, did take obviously initiative at the community level, then we’re the ones who respond will be able to actually, um, comfort and provide some solutions to their community. But it was not the reaction or with, it’s not the result of an existing structure that is able to harness that capacity within our community and within the entire island.

Um, we have [name of another local organization]. We have a environmental dialogue committee, which is a local NGO. We also have the anti incineration coalition. Um, we have a UPR professors who were fundamental in terms of providing reports and analysis to, to really have a proposal that is that on facts and not just, it’s not an aspirational proposal. Does that a proposal that provides the technical route as well as the financial structure that is needed to engage in, in the transformation towards a hundred percent renewables on the island. Um, we also have Aida, which is the Institute for Energy Economics and financial analysis, which is the US, uh, based think tank that has a bit of working in Puerto Rico I think since 2015. Um, and we were also able to engage support from gossip willow, which is a local NGO based in at hotels who have been quite active for uh, even prior to Maria regarding renewables and has taken a leadership role in terms of getting a renewables who are our central mountain region.

We also have the green building institute supporting our proposal as well as the Puerto Rico Conservation Trust. Um, so this is a wide array of local entities with both energy sector expertise and environmental expertise, as well as community that have the fines and identified that, uh, we need to really pose form and stress. Then, um, the way that energy has been, uh, could use and how energy the energy sector has been developed on the island. And that is what that proposal to not only get to 100% renewable, but it’s a different way of getting there. Um, and I think that’s where it was. The great difference perhaps is, uh, with, uh, governments has the fine in terms of their objectives and goals and what we’re defining in front of what our objectives are. Um, and, and you were your second question, which was regarding, uh, the transformation that needs to occur.

Well, I think, um, one of the main thing is it’s kind of like, uh, uh, changing the way we approach energy and to start on this standing energy as a common good and the human rights rather than a market commodity, which is still how it’s being handled on the island. Um, the privatization model, for example, that’d be pursued by government limits, the active integration of citizens in the energy sector, um, and limited their capacity to enjoy the well of that. It could create, I mean, everything is left pretty much to market forces. And it’s Fed Puerto Rico could become a model for bottom up transformation with an integrated energy focus that could include risk reduction, climate change, hell at that stability, equity, democratization. I mean it could be a, a really a real paradigm change like I mentioned during the community presentation and you mentioned earlier, um, in terms of steering away from that centralized model into a more distributed model, uh, that both provides capacity building and provide wealth, this music.

And we understand that if, uh, we, we were able to, or the government of Puerto Rico, we’re able to present a saw the light energy plan, it would be feasible to raise a minimum of one point $2 billion a year for the next five years. And that is a combination of federal funding, private sector investments, uh, plus long for example from entities like the rural utility services, also rate payer funded capital investment as well as philanthropic investment, which has obviously been an important fact and an important factor in the uh, past a year and a half. Um, so initially there could be funding the issue with how government is going to be using, um, that’s funding and whether they will be prioritizing renewables or whether they will be, um, concentrating on these massive investments in natural gas, which we do not think are necessary and would probably lock us into centralized fossil fuel combustion for 20 years, locking us in both with longterm contracts and locking us in in terms of having to purchase a certain amount of kilowatt hours for fossil centralized fossil fuel generation, which instead could be used for uh, distributed renewable generation.

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Thanks again for listening. Now, back to the program.

So I would think that the bill, um, has, uh, aspirational RPS is because it’s not necessarily backed by the media policy to ensure that, that that aggressive adoption of renewables actually happened. Um, and it has some nonbinding green language, um, that actually masks, the law’s, uh, real objectives or results, which we’ll need to use of federal funds like I mentioned before, to convert to private longterm contracts, all existing and new generations who operate with natural gas. And this is a provision that is within the energy policy bill. And I mean if you’re going to be requiring all new centralized generation and all existing generation to operate with dual fuel, you’re requiring investment and one of the fuels needs to be natural gas. You’re requiring an incredible amount of investment to go towards that. I mean, it’s a requirement, whereas you don’t have such strict requirements with a renewable provision.

So this is going to obviously crowd out renewable generation and keep our dependency on fossil fuels. Um, and there are several and contradictions within the bill like exposing or already in limited agricultural land and natural resources areas to be used for large scale, uh, PV instead of concentrating on rooftop solar, which is what we promote in Queremos Sol. Um, also you have for example, private contracts that they can be excluded from compliance with the integrated resource plan, just positions. Um, so you also have to keep in mind that these energy policy though is, is, uh, is kind of like an output of a privatization bill. So a privatization bill was approved in 2018 in Puerto Rico. That required that an energy policy be defined for the island and get is what this energy policy, uh, build a site in the past months is the result of. But really what is behind all this is pretty much the privatization of an entity through an obscure process that lacks transparency or benefit cost analysis or any real utility transformation, which is what we need. Um, instead of just kind of like a change of hands from a public utility to a private utility with minimum, a real transformation to drive a change.

So I guess, uh, you know, I, I’ve always been surprised by privatization being put up as a solution to the challenges here because we, we really have, it sounds like as needed as this, um, you know, is this transparent and, and democratic oversight. Um, so I, I, I’m going to leave that there for a second and just say, you know, one of the things that is clear from the work of Queremos Sol and others is that there’s so much evidence that transitioning to renewable energy rather than, for example, lots of gas infrastructure means lower costs, big environmental benefits. Um, you know, what did you see as some of the specific benefits to an energy paradigm that’s rooted in, you know, what I call energy democracy, this notion of like local investment, local wealth building. You know, what’s better about that than having a centralized utility, whether it’s public or private?

Plus, when you talk about distributed energy and having people own their systems and, and provide for their, uh, energy, the man within their own household or within their own business, uh, we’re talking about a possibility for improved quality of life under both normal and extreme conditions like this is with Hurricane Maria. Um, also reuse it. Health and environmental impacts. Um, um, because of fossil fuel emissions and the reduction, and I’m, I’m in the nation of both, um, obviously more equal distribution of benefits and burdens. There are communities in Puerto Rico that have been severely impacted, uh, with obviously the operations of fossil fuels generating facilities, uh, throughout the island and having distributed renewable energy could provide some for some, uh, more equal distribution of the benefits of that and reduction in the burden that they have suffered for decades. Um, and obviously the benefit of capacity building of shared governance, of having a more, a more transparent governance structure and, and contracting process events for infections within, he’ll the, and consumers. Um, it’s an added benefit that, that, uh, you would think that it would be kind of like a, uh, an obvious option for anyone thinking of how to inform the utility yet it is not the, the obvious option that is being pursued by government.

You also have an opportunity where generating energy from rooftops or from micro grids or from other renewable, you know, renew— from renewable resources — is often cheaper than the energy that utility is trying to sell. You comes from dirty sources like, like oil or even potentially from gas. And I’m just curious, is there an option opportunity here or a possibility that community is sort of self organize and provide their own energy at your, my understanding is that for example, the federal government would help back loans to cooperative enterprises, uh, anywhere on the island, uh, that could help them launch. And any you could potentially be competing with other than whether it’s this public entity or a private one. The centralized utility, it seems like there’s a door would be open to compete with that utility and to simply say our community can generate its own energy for cheaper than could be provided by PREPA or its successor.

So, uh, that could be an important leverage tool approved to subsidize and make it more affordable for these types of structures to, to, uh, gain ground and to progress within communities and at the community level. So definitely it’s going to be that, that is where I guess, um, right now the, the most important piece of the puzzle live is to be able to build out and define what bad financial structure could be and to be able to test it. I mean, we already have through the proof of concept on the island, and I think everybody convinced that renewables work. Uh, I, I wouldn’t say that was the case prior to Maria, but after Maria, there have been, uh, an enormous, um, acceptance from the general public in terms of renewable assets, possible, uh, energy stores for the island. Now the issue is to be able to prove that we can establish the financing structures to get to a hundred percent renewables with, uh, local funding with our local economic, uh, possibility because obviously still in topic and philanthropy has made an important contribution, um, after Maria. But we cannot accept philanthropy to just be the only source of funding for the transformation that we need. So, um, definitely co-ops are an alternative. Um, and there, uh, quite interesting and excitement within a co-ops in terms of being able to engage in adopting and pursue renewable energy, this refund within their portfolios. So, um, definitely something to, to continue to work on in the upcoming years.

Until next time, keep your energy local and thanks for listening.