Puerto Rico seems to be in the news only after a natural or economic disaster. I had the opportunity to visit the island in February, and it was an eye-opening experience.
It shocked me to see a part of the United States where families live in tents because it’s not safe to return to their homes, and where dozens of school buildings are abandoned and empty of children. A perfect storm of natural disasters often exacerbated by climate change along with economic stress, a failing electricity grid and political troubles, have prevented this beautiful island from fulfilling its promise. Still recovering from Hurricane Maria, millions of dollars of aid have failed to provide a truly resilient home for its residents.
My most important takeaway is that effective disaster response should send solar and batteries.
As University of Minnesota Professor Gabe Chan recently told MPR News, Hurricane Maria had between 3,000 and 5,000 deaths, and the majority of those deaths were attributed to a lack of energy.
This is a new reality we must be prepared to face. As temperatures rise globally, we can expect more climate change-fueled disasters, and not just on islands and coastal areas. Increasing temperatures bring more intense storms and droughts; more water vapor is evaporated into the atmosphere, fueling more powerful storms; and rising ocean temperatures and rising sea levels can increase tropical storm winds and waves.
Given this reality, our disaster relief strategies should anticipate the need for resilient power. Instead, what I learned in Puerto Rico is that conventional disaster assistance actually makes things worse when it comes to sustainable energy solutions.
After Hurricane Maria, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) installed 1667 generators across the island, many the size of trucks, using 10,000 gallons of diesel a day. Not only does this mean climate-disaster relief, in fact, has a very dirty climate footprint; we also were reminded by Bahamian leaders at the Clinton Global Initiative’s Action Network on Post-Disaster Recovery that diesel to fuel generators cost hundreds of dollars to operate, beyond the means of most hurricane-affected residents.
While well-intentioned, this pattern of short-term disaster solutions can have a paperweight effect sending equipment that communities don’t have money or capacity to support over time. Heegaard, who built his first emergency electricity system as a Burning Man medical station, said during our tour of their mobile trailers that disaster relief efforts generally send the wrong stuff. Instead of diesel generators, plastic water bottles, and blue tarps, we should be sending solar plus batteries, water filters, and resilient, sustainable shelters. Instead, disaster relief is mostly powered by fossil fuels: flights, shipping, and on-site auxiliary power.
2020 The Energy News Network