By The Star Staff
Gov. Jenniffer González Colón sent a letter to President Joe Biden late last week to request a declaration of a federal state of emergency after the blackout on the last day of the year.
The governor said that with her request she expects that Puerto Rico will not depend only on renewable energy.
“That the president bypasses the process of FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] and the Department of Energy to release the money, the $18 billion that we have to improve the generation and transmission [systems] and that has [run into] such a roadblock,” the governor said.
“It has come another than 11-14 times, now it will come another time in January, but the money needed to fix the electrical system hasn’t been disbursed,” she continued. “The money that has been disbursed is the separate fund of $1 billion that was approved for solar panels, and I applaud this, it has been very efficient,but the $18 billion that we have had for more than seven years has not yet come out.”
“And there are also some requirements of the federal government for a type of exclusive energy that in this moment in Puerto Rico, you can’t depend on having generation of natural gas or burn combustible fossil fuels and how much it costs me to have an exclusive wind or solar panel and how much it costs me to have an exclusive wind or solar panel plant,” González Colón said. “So I hope that with this we can understand that Puerto Rico has to be lit up and that we can’t bet on only one kind of technology. In addition to that, it will permit a faster process for FEMA and that the federal government does it in an expedited manner in environmental terms as well.”
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