Caribbean energy: devastation and opportunity

Governments want to remake their electric grids

The hurricanes that swept through the Caribbean late last year took a devastating toll on islands across the region. Hurricane Irma's 185-mile-per-hour winds flattened entire communities, while epic downpours turned streets to rivers. The region's electric grids were devastated. Five months after the storms had come and gone, a third of Puerto Ricans were still without power, and other islands' systems have been similarly slow to come back. The devastation has given renewed impetus to an effort to remake the region's energy system. Governments across the Caribbean have complained for decades that importing diesel and fuel oil to generate the vast majority of its power is both too costly and