I’ll be honest: I have been following protests against LUMA Energy as well as the island’s energy crisis for years now, but I hadn’t thought about the day-to-day travail for people like me. Then I listened to an episode of the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s (CBC) frontburner podcast, “How a Canadian-led company became a public enemy in Puerto Rico”—and there was mention of problems caused by voltage fluctuations and power surges.
Having recently lost my computer to a power surge here in New York (yes, it was connected to a surge protector) and having to go into debt to get a new one, I realized that this is an issue Puerto Ricans face regularly. Even though many homes have back-up generators, as do hospitals, the constant switching back and forth between regular power and back-up during fluctuations and blackouts often damages the devices that are receiving power.
The story told during the frontburner podcast is now a full article and video written by investigative journalist Jonathon Gatehouse, with documentary production from Sylvène Gilchrist. It’s just nine minutes long, and a must-watch.
As the CBC News’ YouTube notes explain:
LUMA Power was supposed to keep the lights on in Puerto Rico, but the company – half-owned by Alberta’s ATCO and run by a Canadian — is a lightning rod for frustration over continued blackouts and rising costs. LUMA says the blame is misdirected.
The text article’s headline deviates just slightly from the frontburner episode’s: “Why a Canadian CEO could be Puerto Rico's most-hated man.”
The U.S. territory, home to 3.3 million people, has one of the least reliable electrical systems in the developed world. It's subject to all manner of breakdowns (in this case, a blown substation on school property that triggered a lengthy dispute about who was responsible for the repairs) and liable to entirely collapse when tropical storms and hurricanes roll through.
The headquarters of the company that is supposed to be fixing the threadbare grid is only a 15-minute drive from Escuela Rafael Rivera Otero. LUMA Energy — 50 per cent owned by Calgary's ATCO Ltd. — has been handed a 15-year, $2-billion contract to manage Puerto Rico's grid and oversee the modernization of the island's electrical system.
But the company charged with keeping the lights on has become a lightning rod. Customers complain that blackouts have become more frequent and last longer. And when the power does come back on, voltage surges, frying appliances and causing fires.
It’s about more than the inconvenience of a power outage.
It was this line in the story—”And when the power does come back on, voltage surges, frying appliances and causing fires”—that got me to thinking that, with all the challenges that folks face on the island—this has to be a final straw for many. When we see news coverage of the LUMA protests (if we see them at all), we have to be aware that each one of those people who have taken to the streets represents hundreds more who are just attempting to get through the day and survive.
Thanks to video journalists on the island, we’ve seen clips of #FueraLuma (“Luma Get Out”) protests like this one:
Puerto Rican music superstar Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, better known as Bad Bunny, has openly criticized the LUMA situation on the island in his music video, “El Apagón” (“The Blackout”), which includes a biting documentary from independent journalist Bianca Graulau.
At concerts, Bad Bunny has told LUMA and the island’s governor, Pedro Pierluisi, to “go to hell.”
Central to the island’s problems is power, and who holds it. Puerto Rico’s status as a U.S. colony, the ongoing debates over statehood or independence, its local government, its control by an appointed, un-elected fiscal control board, dubbed “La Junta” by islanders, are all key issues that aren’t going to be resolved anytime soon. The decision in November 2022 to grant LUMA a contract extension was, and is, disheartening.
As Carlos Edill Berríos Polanco reported for Latino Rebels at the time:
SAN JUAN — On Wednesday, the same day it was set to expire, the Puerto Rico Public-Private Alliances (P3) granted LUMA Energy an extension of its provisional contract that will only end once the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s (PREPA) debt restructuring is completed.
“The extension of LUMA’s supplementary contract is in the public interest,” Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said at a press conference on Wednesday.
The extension was approved by the P3’s board of directors, PREPA’s board of directors, and the federally imposed Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico (FOMBPR), known by Puerto Ricans as “La Junta.”
The supplementary contract implies that the Puerto Rican government will pay more money than the agreed amount in the proposed 15-year contract, which was scheduled to go into effect on Thursday, December 1. LUMA was paid $115 million in 2022 under the provisional contract, but the government will pay $122 million due to cost-of-living and inflation increases under the new supplementary contract.
Environmental groups on the island, including EarthJustice, quickly issued protest statements.
While the validity of the contract extension is being contested, the result of it is clear: it allows LUMA to continue operating despite its poor performance and overpriced service. After the decision, Earthjustice and Puerto Rico-based groups issued the following statement:
“Rooftop solar and storage are instrumental to combatting climate change while helping Puerto Rican communities weather disasters more effectively,” said Ruth Santiago, environmental advocate and Earthjustice board member. “Local authorities must face the fact that a distributed, renewable energy revolution is here to stay.”
“The decision to extend the supplementary contract leaves Puerto Rico even more vulnerable by allowing LUMA to continue effectively controlling the electrical system with no end date to the contract, paying more and without real performance measurements or a current penalty system.
Paula Reisdorf explored the issue for CorpsWatch on Jan. 18.
[L]ocals aren’t just angry about blackouts – a major complaint is about LUMA Energy’s skyrocketing bills. Customers now pay approximately 33.4 cents per kilowatt hour in Puerto Rico, compared to an average of 12.9 cents on the U.S. mainland. This is double what they paid two years ago, according to an analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a non-profit in Texas. Indeed, Puerto Ricans now spend an average of 8 percent of their income on electricity, a little more than three times more than the average U.S. citizen.
“To increase bills when you don’t provide a perfect service ... the level of impunity is absurd,” Luisa Rosado, a mother of two who lives in San Juan, told the Associated Press.
Indeed, these power outages have had a catastrophic impact on the essential services like water delivery and healthcare which requires continuous power to keep medicines refrigerated. Some 25 deaths have been attributed to Hurricane Fiona by Puerto Rico’s health department.
Critics worry the process could further delay Puerto Rico’s transition to renewable energy and still not bring access to reliable electricity to an island riddled with power outages.
According to local policies, 40% of Puerto Rico's electricity must come from renewable energy sources by 2025, with the goal of achieving 100% renewable electricity by 2050. Less than 4% of Puerto Rico's power generation currently comes from renewable energy
[..].
Power customers in Puerto Rico endured seven electric rate increases last year, even though people in Puerto Rico already pay about twice as much as mainland U.S. customers for unreliable service.
Queremos Sol, a coalition of organizations and individuals advocating for Puerto Rico's sustainable future, has said officials should learn from the privatization process of the island's power transmission and distribution, which was handed over to Luma Energy in mid-2021.
“The same mistake can’t be repeated,” the group told lawmakers in a letter Friday.
In a September 2022 North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) report about the need for rooftop solar, Ruth Santiago, Catalina de Onís, and Hilda Lloréns wrote:
In 2020, Puerto Rico handed over operation and maintenance of its power distribution and transmission to LUMA Energy, a joint venture created specifically for the job by Texas-based Quanta Services and Alberta-based ATCO. Luma, however, is performing even worse than the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), which previously oversaw the archipelago’s electric energy system. Since LUMA took over most components of the electric system in June 2021, residents have experienced an uptick in power outages and fluctuations in electric voltage and current.
The deterioration of the electrical system under LUMA has had adverse effects on public health, as hospitals, healthcare centers, and homes are frequently left without power. The instability puts life and property at risk by causing damage to appliances, medical equipment, and even generators. As a result, expensive appliances may stop working, refrigerated food and medicine often spoils, and electric home-health medical equipment becomes unreliable or unusable. The damages have affected small and large businesses, essential institutions such as schools, as well as food inventories, all of which cause distress, economic losses, and disruptions in services.
While the economic losses from constant power outages can be measured, the enormous emotional toll and suffering caused by the ongoing, entwined energy and climate crises is much harder to quantify. All the while, LUMA lobbies to rebuild the existing centralized, fossil-fuel-enabling transmission and distribution system with a historic amount of federal disaster recovery funds.
The situation is not hopeless, and there are proposed solutions, like rooftop solar, as reported by NPR’s Jeff Brady on Monday.
Last year the DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, with funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, began studying options to transition the island to 100% renewable energy by 2050. The goal is to build an electricity system that is more resilient against future storms, which climate change research shows will be bigger and more powerful.
The plan is to transition away from imported fossil fuels — petroleum, natural gas and coal — to cleaner sources such as solar and wind. Another goal is to make electricity more affordable. The island's power rates are about twice as high as average rates across the U.S. The federal study is expected to be completed by the end of this year.
Four different scenarios have been modeled to meet Puerto Rico's targets — all include more rooftop solar combined with battery storage. First is a focus on installing distributed energy on buildings where owners could then get the financial benefits of generating electricity. The second focuses on critical services, such as hospitals, fire stations and grocery stores. The third includes prioritizing deployment in remote and low-to-moderate income households to distribute benefits equitably. The final option is to install solar panels on as many other rooftops as possible.
The key questions, which no one can answer:
- Will Puerto Rico’s people be able to wrest power away from entrenched colonial interests on the island and here in the U.S. to be able to implement alternative energy solutions?
- How long will people on the island continue to have fried appliances on their daily menus?
RELATED: Caribbean Matters: Unpacking the Puerto Rico statehood debate
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