This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience while browsing it. By clicking 'Got It' you're accepting these terms.
Most recent
Trending
Top Videos
The best of EcoWatch, right in your inbox. Sign up for our email newsletter!
Puerto Rico Plans to Privatize PREPA as Critics Warn of 'Maximum Amount of Corruption and a Minimal Amount of Electricity'
Puerto Rico will take steps to privatize its troubled state-owned electric utility, officials announced Monday.
Governor Ricardo Rosselló said plans to sell the bankrupt Puerto Rican Power Authority, or PREPA, would move the island towards a "consumer-centered model" for power as well as help Puerto Rico attain its goal of 30 percent renewable energy.
The utility, which faced long-standing charges of corruption and severe mismanagement, came under harsh criticism for its handling of Hurricane Maria, including its decision to grant a $300 million contract to a little-known Montana energy firm. Nearly 30 percent of Puerto Rico's population remains without power four months after the hurricane hit the island.
Rosselló said it could take 18 months to privatize PREPA, the largest U.S. public utility measured by the number of customers—3.3 million, NPR reported.
"The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority does not work and cannot continue to operate like this," Rosselló said in a televised address. "With that PREPA, we cannot face the risks of living in an area of high vulnerability to catastrophic events."
As reported by Reuters:
"One analyst was skeptical of Rosselló's plan.
'He's got no energy plan, no financial analysis, if he thinks he's going to sell it off and the private sector is going to come in and invest, that is a recipe for Puerto Rico being raked over the coals by private interests,' said Tom Sanzillo, director of finance for the Cleveland, Ohio-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
'This will produce a maximum amount of corruption and a minimal amount of electricity,' said Sanzillo, whose organization has provided expert witnesses to PREC proceedings."
San Juan Mayor Carmen YulÃn Cruz also criticized the privatization with a tweet in Spanish, translated as "The privatization of PREPA is to put the economic development of the country in private hands. The authority will serve other interests."
For a deeper dive:
Reuters, AP, ABC, Politico, NPR. CNBC, Fortune, Huffington Post, LA Times
For more climate change and clean energy news, you can follow Climate Nexus on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for daily Hot News.
- Puerto Rico's Massive Blackout Underscores Island's Fragile ... ›
- 100 Days After Hurricane Maria, 1.5 Million American Citizens in ... ›
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
By Carlo Ratti, Ida Auken
On the window of a bike shop in Copenhagen, a sign reads: Your next car is a bike.
By Carey Gillam
For the last five years, Chris Stevick has helped his wife Elaine in her battle against a vicious type of cancer that the couple believes was caused by Elaine's repeated use of Monsanto's Roundup herbicide around a California property the couple owned. Now the roles are reversed as Elaine must help Chris face his own cancer.
'Insect Apocalypse' Will Have Dire Con​sequences for ​All Life on Earth​, Report Warns
The last 50 years have been brutal for wildlife. Animals have lost their habitats and seen their numbers plummet. Now a new report from a British conservation group warns that habitat destruction and increased pesticide use has on a trajectory for an "insect apocalypse," which will have dire consequences for humans and all life on Earth, as The Guardian reported.
Sales of electric cars are surging and the world is generating more and more power from renewable sources, but it is not enough to cut greenhouse gas emissions and to stop the global climate crisis, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Trending
By Jake Johnson
A Greenpeace report released Tuesday uses a hypothetical "Smart Supermarket" that has done away with environmentally damaging single-use plastics to outline a possible future in which the world's oceans and communities are free of bags, bottles, packaging and other harmful plastic pollutants.
By Irene Banos Ruiz
Pediatricians in New Delhi, India, say children's lungs are no longer pink, but black.
Our warming planet is already impacting the health of the world's children and will shape the future of an entire generation if we fail to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius (35.6°F), the 2019 Lancet Countdown Report on health and climate change shows.
Trending
The FBI is looking into how the state of Pennsylvania granted permits for a controversial natural gas pipeline as part of a corruption investigation, the AP reports.
Three cows who were washed off their North Carolina island by Hurricane Dorian have been found alive after swimming at least two miles, The New York Times reported Wednesday.