The Trump administration has canceled solar projects in Puerto Rico worth millions of dollars, according to an email obtained by The Associated Press. The cancellations were announced as the island continues to struggle with chronic power outages and what the email characterizes as grid fragility.
The projects, described by AP as part of a renewable-energy effort, were aimed at helping 30,000 low-income families in rural areas across the U.S. territory. The AP report said the plans reflected a broader transition under Puerto Rico’s former governor toward a “100% renewable future.”
In the email, the U.S. Energy Department said a push for that future threatened reliability of Puerto Rico’s energy system. The message states: “The Puerto Rico grid cannot afford to run on more distributed solar power,” adding that the rapid, widespread deployment of rooftop solar has created “fluctuations” that lead to “unacceptable instability and fragility.”
Javier Rúa Jovet, public policy director for Puerto Rico’s Solar and Energy Storage Association, disputed the department’s assessment in a phone interview Thursday. He said about 200,000 families across Puerto Rico rely on solar power that generates close to 1.4 gigawatts of energy a day for the rest of the island, and he said that solar generation helps avoid blackouts. He also said inverters on those systems help regulate fluctuations across the grid.
Rúa Jovet said he was saddened by the cancellations. “It’s a tragedy, honestly,” he said. “These are funds for the most needy.”
The AP report said the cancellation is part of a broader shift earlier this month, when the Energy Department canceled three programs, including one worth $400 million, that would have installed solar and battery storage systems in low-income homes and those with medical needs. The email AP obtained said that on Jan. 9 the department would reallocate up to $350 million from private distributed solar systems to support fixes intended to improve Puerto Rico’s power generation; it was not immediately clear whether that funding has been allocated.
AP also reported that one of the canceled programs would have financed solar projects for 150 low-income households on Culebra, a small island off Puerto Rico’s east coast. Dan Whittle, an associate vice president with the Environmental Defense Fund, which AP said was overseeing that project, said people associated with the effort were “really upset and angry,” because they see others keeping the lights on during outages but do not know why they were not included.
Whittle described the federal decision as misguided. “They are buying hook, line and sinker that solar is the problem. It could not be more wrong,” he said. He also said a privately funded project had helped install solar panels and batteries on 45 homes a week before Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico in September 2022.
The solar efforts were tied to 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 continues recovery from Hurricane Maria. AP said the Category 4 storm in September 2017 razed an electric grid already weakened by a lack of maintenance and investment, and that outages have persisted since then, including massive blackouts on New Year’s Eve in 2024 and during Holy Week last year.
In recent years, residents and businesses that could afford to do so have embraced solar energy, AP reported, even as the island’s generation mix still relies largely on fossil fuels. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, AP said more than 60% of energy on the island is generated by petroleum-fired power plants, 24% by natural gas, 8% by coal and 7% by renewables.
AP said the cancellation comes about a month after Puerto Rico Gov. Jenniffer González sued Luma Energy, a private company that oversees transmission and distribution of power on the island. González said at the time that the electrical system “has not improved with the speed, consistency or effectiveness that Puerto Rico deserves.”
AP also tied Puerto Rico’s energy fragility to the island’s ongoing struggle to restructure more than $9 billion in debt held by the Electric Power Authority, noting that the restructuring effort has failed to reach an agreement with creditors.