"Puerto Rico lost electricity again on April 18, seven months after Hurricane Maria first knocked out the island’s power grid. For people in some remote rural areas, the blackout was more of the same. Their power had yet to be restored.

The dangerous fragility of Puerto Rico’s energy systems has put other Caribbean countries on high alert. Across the region, electric grids are dated, ailing and overburdened – making it easy work for a powerful passing storm. 

Caribbean nations also rely heavily on oil and diesel imports to fuel their power plants – a dirty and expensive way to produce energy. So even before the 2017 hurricane season, Caribbean governments were trying to integrate renewable energy sources like wind and solar into their existing grids.
Now that task seems far more urgent. To move beyond fossil fuels, Caribbean countries must transform their energy systems by building in new, greener sources of power. That will also make electric grids more resilient to weather extremes because they will be decentralized – pulling from a diverse array of power sources."

​Click here for the rest of the article.

by Masaō Ashtine
Lecturer in Alternative Energy, University of the West Indies, Mona Campus
Published by The Conversation
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A SAGE member recently shared this report thinking that it would provide good information for those of us who are considering coastal resiliency in New England and beyond.  According to the executive summary, "This report provides a range of practical considerations for property managers, regulators, coastal municipal leaders, scientists and practitioners, who are interested in advancing living shoreline policies and practices. The living shoreline profiles provide an overview of the techniques, conceptual designs, case studies, siting characteristics and design considerations and regulatory and review agencies that oversee the designs. Additionally, an applicability index has been developed for common living shoreline types in New England. It is intended to serve as a guide for the development of regulations and policies to explicitly incorporate these approaches into the coastal management programs of the respective states and New England’s coastal communities."

Check it out:
https://www.conservationgateway.org/ConservationPractices/Marine/Pages/new-england-living-shorelines.aspx