Methane gas power generation failures are responsible for a disproportionate share of weather-related outages, Bloomberg reports. Nevertheless, E&E reports, the Biden administration is planning to pour $5 billion into temporary fossil fuel power plants and other infrastructure repairs in Puerto Rico. The island territory’s notoriously unreliable grid has seen numerous widespread blackouts in recent years — often with the only exceptions being where community-based solar installations kept lights on and refrigerators running.
“There’s really no justification for this additional fossil fuel generation. We have so much of it already,” Ruth Santiago, a Puerto Rico-based activist and member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, told E&E News. “This is a scam.” Distributed solar installations are proliferating around the island, with more than 3,000 new systems added monthly and increasing numbers of solar customers are adding battery backup systems to increase their resilience to prolonged outages. (Gas unreliability: Bloomberg $; Puerto Rico fossils: E&E News; Puerto Rico batteries: Canary Media)