Welcome to the first official Connect Puerto Rico newsletter.

I’m Jillian Melero, founder and editor of Connect Puerto Rico (CPR). And I want to thank you for supporting us along our prelaunch journey. 

CPR has been under development since Oct. 2023 when we were accepted into the Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at The City University of New York.

When we completed the program in Jan. 2024, we started publishing monthly articles on Medium to better understand and explain the many issues involved in Puerto Rico’s ongoing crisis with electricity and infrastructure. — If you haven’t read them yet, I’ve sprinkled a few of them throughout the issue to provide additional context.

In June 2024, we were accepted into the Google News Initiative’s Prelaunch Startup Lab. When we completed the program in August, we launched our website, Connect-PuertoRico.com.

But our origin story really started seven years ago today. 

Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico Sept. 20, 2017. A category 4, it was Puerto Rico’s deadliest hurricane, resulting in thousands of lives lost, the longest blackout in U.S. history, and more than $9 billion in damages.

The death toll was initially reported as 64, but later, investigative reporting by el Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI) revealed that over 3,000 deaths were linked to the storm, largely due to the prolonged power outages and lack of access to healthcare after the storm. 

This reaffirmed the urgent need to modernize and harden Puerto Rico’s electrical infrastructure against hurricanes, including transitioning to renewable energy, especially solar and batteries, as well as decentralizing electrical service to make sure natural disasters and other disruptions in one area won’t disable other parts of the grid.

Over the following year, a narrative emerged in the media about rebuilding Puerto Rico into a renewable energy utopia. In 2019, feeling hopeful about the reconstruction, I visited with folks at the University of Puerto Rico to learn more. I spent time with the founders and members of the National Institute of Island Energy and Sustainability, and left with three main takeaways about what was stalling progress with renewables: outdated infrastructure, insufficient workforce, and — for some outside groups coming in to try and do the work — a  lack of local knowledge.

It’s now been seven years since we learned some difficult lessons from Maria. And yet little to no progress has been made in Puerto Rico’s transition to renewable energy or decentralized electricity. 

To the contrary, FEMA and the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), the government-owned electric power company, are instead investing heavily in fossil fuels when residents have been clear about their desire to see investment in renewables and other solutions.

This is where the work of Connect Puerto Rico begins.

It’s our mission to inform readers about the issues shaping Puerto Rico’s transition to renewable energy. 

But it is our vision to connect community leaders, business investors, policymakers and more to collaborate on solutions that are resilient, sustainable, and equitable. 

Resilient in that they can withstand hurricanes and other natural disasters. Sustainable in that they can withstand economic and other manmade disasters. And equitable in that they benefit Puerto Ricans and strengthen Puerto Rico.

Welcome to Connect Puerto Rico: News to Inform. Community to Empower.