Acquired by the United States from Spain in 1898, Puerto Rico became ratified as a Commonwealth in 1952. With a population of almost 3.2 million people, Puerto Rico has more people than 21 U.S. states and a territory of 3,425 square miles, making it slightly bigger than Connecticut. Located in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico is made up of 143 small islands, islets, and cays with one main central island bearing its name. Mostly mountainous, except for the coastal lowlands and the karst region in the north, which consists of formations of rugged limestone like sinkholes, caves, cliffs, and haystack hills, Puerto Rico is decidedly a rainforest, getting more than 100 billion gallons a year of rainfall, and providing a home to many species found nowhere else on earth. Among the territory’s native fauna is its unofficial mascot, the coquí tree frog, a tiny creature that makes a distinctive high-pitched chirping noise heard throughout Puerto Rico.
CLIMATE IMPACTS
Puerto Rico ranks 6th globally among countries and territories most affected by extreme weather events in the latest Climate Risk Index 2025 published by Germanwatch.
Residents of Puerto Rico are among the most concerned about climate change in the world, with 93% reporting they are “very worried” or “somewhat worried” about climate change in a recent survey from the Yale Program on Climate Communication.
- As changes to the climate have exacerbated hurricanes, they have hit Puerto Rico extremely hard. Hurricane Maria, sweeping through Puerto Rico in September of 2017, brought as much rainfall in one day as the island usually sees in three months. It was the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico’s history, costing the island as much as $139 billion as it struggled to recover from all the damage. In 2026, it remains the most destructive and costly single event in modern Puerto Rican history but Hurricane Fiona in 2022 proved uniquely devastating because it compounded the island's unresolved infrastructure vulnerabilities
- Sea level rise is another imminent danger to Puerto Rico, with 85% of its population living within five miles of a coast. Puerto Rico’s seas are about half a foot higher since 1880 when records began, and the rate of the growth is only accelerating, with scientists projecting 22 inches by 2060. This trend has made ports, roads, and other infrastructure extremely vulnerable.
- Sea level rise combined with storm surges causing flooding, which has a direct effect on Puerto Rican daily life as well as on tourism (making up 8% of the island’s economy).
- Climate change is also responsible for the collapse of the insect population in Puerto Rico’s rainforests, causing devastating effects to the island’s ecosystems. Insects are a vital food source for many of Puerto Rico’s creatures, including the coqui frog. As the creatures that eat insects die, their predators lose their food source as well, causing reverberations through the food chain. Insects are also vital to plant pollination, so loss of insects additionally harms the flora and fauna of Puerto Rico.
ENERGY
Puerto Rico consumes 70 times more energy than it produces. Its energy customers currently face high prices as they primarily import fossil fuels for power generation. When extreme weather impedes the fuel supply, it leaves Puerto Ricans helpless without its own generating power as we saw in 2017. The 6.4 magnitude earthquake in Puerto Rico in January 2017 caused significant damage to its two largest power plants, followed by widespread power outages. This was followed by Hurricane Maria in September 2017 causing catastrophic damage (2,982 fatalities and US$90 billion in damages) including flooding, power outages and landslides, leading to the longest blackout in U.S. history.
All this makes it especially vital for Puerto Rico to switch over to renewables generated locally. And, Puerto Rico has been rebuilding its power grid to transition to clean resources, including the largest solar and energy storage buildout in the United States. Yet, as the Environmental Defense Fund reported in 2022, even five years after Hurricane Maria, residents were still struggling with prolonged service disruptions that “create public health emergencies and threaten access to clean drinking water, medical services, food and other basic needs.” Hurricane Fiona in 2022, Hurricanes Ernesto and Oscar in 2024, and Hurricane Erin in 2025 all caused infrastructural damage to Puerto Rico’s power grid and power outages.
In 2025, fossil fuel-fired power plants provided 93% of Puerto Rico’s total electricity. Petroleum accounted for 62%, natural gas was 23%, coal was 8%. Renewables provided 6% overall, and of this solar accounted for about two-fifths, hydroelectric for about three-tenths, and wind power for about one-fourth.
CLEAN ENERGY GOALS AND CHALLENGES
"Though Puerto Rico’s goal of 40% renewable energy faces delays, solar capacity is growing fast. The island secured a $585 million federal loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to finance a 100-megawatt solar panel system spread across Coamo, Ponce, Caguas, and Peñuelas, which will be paired with a 55-megawatt battery energy storage system. The project is currently in the pre-construction development phase after clearing its final federal environmental reviews. This initiative sits alongside historical utility agreements encompassing over 200 megawatts of combined solar, wind, and landfill gas operations designed to diversify the island's fragile grid.
- "While Puerto Rico built some of the Caribbean's earliest utility-scale clean energy milestones—such as the Santa Isabel Wind Farm—the region's largest wind and solar plants are now located elsewhere in the Caribbean, such as the Dominican Republic. However, the island is experiencing a massive grassroots energy transition. Driven by frequent grid blackouts, rooftop solar capacity reached 1,456 megawatts at the end of 2025. Rather than just a fraction of renewables, this rapid growth means rooftop solar now accounts for 20% of Puerto Rico's overall power generation capacity mix, surpassing natural gas to become the island's second-largest capacity source behind petroleum liquids."
- In 2019, they adopted the Puerto Rico Energy Public Policy Act, setting a goal of 100% renewable energy by 2050, with interim goals of 40% renewables by 2025 and 50% by 2040.
- In August 2020, the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau (PREB) moved forward in the direction of renewables, directing the procurement of at least 3.5 GW of solar and 1.36 GW of battery storage by 2025.
- The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) procured 840 megawatts of new renewable generation capacity, but as of mid-2023 none of these projects have yet come online.
- In 2025, Puerto Rico amended the Energy Public Policy Act to eliminate the interim renewable resource targets of 40% and 60%, and repealed the ban on the use of coal-fired power after 2028, thereby extending the one remaining coal-fired electricity generating plant’s contract to 2032.
LEGISLATION AND EXECUTIVE ORDERS
- In 2010, Puerto Rico passed Acts 82 and 83, creating a Renewable Energy Credit (REC) system to incentivize clean energy production. To baseline these efforts, Executive Order 2013-018 mandated a scientific study to quantify the island's annual greenhouse gas emissions, giving agencies the data needed to design target reduction strategies.
- These foundational policies were heavily upgraded by Act No. 17-2019 (the Puerto Rico Energy Public Policy Act), which legally mandates a transition to 100% renewable energy by 2050 under the strategic oversight of the State Office of Energy Public Policy (OEPPE). While the island was drastically falling behind the law's original interim goal of reaching 40% renewable energy, the Puerto Rico legislature passed Act No. 1-2025, which officially removed those intermediate milestones from the books while preserving the final 2050 mandate.
- Parallel to these energy mandates, the island expanded its comprehensive environmental framework via Law 33 of 2019 (the Climate Change Mitigation, Adaptation and Resilience Act). This law created the Committee of Experts and Advisors on Climate Change (CEACC), a nine-member body tasked with drafting a master Climate Plan for the territory. This legislative push laid the groundwork for recent, sector-specific climate guidelines, including the November 2023 Carbon Reduction Strategy for transport infrastructure and the March 2024 Priority Climate Action Plan (PCAP). To guide the execution of these overlapping clean energy and climate goals, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) completed its two-year, data-driven PR100 Study in early 2024, providing the island with a deeply detailed implementation roadmap highlighting the critical grid upgrades necessary to safely achieve full reliability and complete the transition.
OTHER INITIATIVES
- The Puerto Rico Climate Change Council (PRCCC): Formed in 2010, the PRCCC is a voluntary, multidisciplinary coalition of scientists, academic experts, and community planners tracking local climate impacts. The council meets annually and published foundational resources, including the 2013 State of the Climate Report—which informed the U.S. Fourth National Climate Assessment—and their latest comprehensive 2022 State of the Climate Report.
- Green Tourism Promotion: To protect the island's natural economy, the government launched a dedicated Green Tourism mobile application. The app actively promotes ecotourism within the ecologically vulnerable regions protected by the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources (DNER).
- Metropolitan Climate Actions: Outside of territory-wide mandates, regional bodies are executing localized strategies. Under the EPA’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program, the San Juan-Bayamón-Caguas Metropolitan Statistical Area designed its own tailored Priority Climate Action Plan (PCAP) focused directly on delivering emissions reductions and environmental benefits to low-income and disadvantaged urban communities.
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE & DISASTER COLONIALISM
Puerto Rico's climate transition is deeply tied to a growing environmental justice crisis, where low-wealth, rural, and Afro-descendent communities bear a disproportionate burden of both pollution and grid failure:
- The Fight Against Fossil Fuel Rebuilding: The bulk of multi-billion-dollar disaster recovery funds from FEMA and HUD—which largely did not reach the island until three years after Hurricane Maria—was initially channeled toward rebuilding legacy fossil fuel infrastructure located in already overburdened communities.
- The Landmark FEMA Lawsuit: In response, a coalition of grassroots organizations, including Comité Diálogo Ambiental, sued FEMA for locking the island into decades of renewed fossil fuel dependency in direct violation of local renewable mandates. Instead of a centralized, polluting grid, advocates argued funds should prioritize distributed alternatives like rooftop solar to ensure power during blackouts.
- The Court Order Mandate: In October 2025, a federal court ruled in favor of the community groups, ordering FEMA to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) evaluating distributed solar alternatives. Subsequent legal filings exposed a stark 4-to-1 funding disparity favoring centralized corporate contractors over direct household assistance.
- The Reality of Disaster Colonialism: Activists emphasize that Puerto Rico’s colonial status paralyzes its climate response. Hurricane Maria exposed how natural crises can be exploited to deepen structural neglect and dependence on the United States. As an unrecognized territory, Puerto Rico has no representation at the United Nations and remains ineligible for international climate financing—a systemic barrier that grows more critical as climate change accelerates extreme weather.
COLLABORATION WITH STATES
Puerto Rico is a member of the U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of governors from 24 states and two territories committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
