Trump DOE reroutes Puerto Rico solar funds to PREPA

Trump DOE – Congress approved a $1 billion Puerto Rico Energy Resilience Fund in 2022 to expand rooftop solar and battery backups for low-income residents—especially medically vulnerable people during storms. But after President Trump took office, the Department of Energy

In 2022, Congress approved a $1 billion Energy Resilience Fund for Puerto Rico with a clear purpose: help repair an electric system that has repeatedly failed during hurricanes, by backing rooftop solar and battery systems that could keep the lights on when storms hit.

The Biden administration’s Department of Energy envisioned a network that would reach about 40. 000 low-income Puerto Ricans. many living with health conditions that require dependable power. In that plan. solar and batteries weren’t just a climate upgrade—they were emergency lifelines. reducing reliance on an unstable grid and keeping medically vulnerable people safer during outages.

Then the plan vanished. The Trump administration’s Department of Energy redirected a large share of the resilience funds to the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority. or PREPA. the bankrupt utility that operates the island’s grid. The funds are now poised to shore up PREPA’s fleet of power plants. which largely run on fossil fuels. and $50 million will fund a new natural gas pipeline.

The administration has defended the shift by saying PREPA’s infrastructure improvements will ultimately benefit a broader swath of Puerto Rico. But the method—how the money was moved away from its intended use. and whether Congress’s intent was followed—has become the central dispute. especially because public records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show the process was handled in ways that avoided competition and accelerated timelines.

The documents indicate that the DOE gave PREPA unusually favorable treatment, including soliciting no competing bids for the resilience funds, fast-tracking the review process, and using President Trump’s executive order announcing an “energy emergency” as the justification for the award.

One decision stands out even more: the DOE waived a typical requirement that grant recipients provide substantial funding of their own to cover project costs. Exceptions can be made for indigent recipients or economically distressed communities. but for large organizations such as PREPA—described as having nearly $4 billion in annual revenue—the agency typically requires a 50 percent cost share.

In PREPA’s case, the DOE accepted just a 1 percent cost share. In the award materials. the DOE described PREPA as under “significant financial stress. ” and said waiving the cost-share requirement was “necessary in order to provide a more stable foundation for Puerto Rico to begin to perform long-term energy planning and repairs.”.

A former Biden administration DOE official. who spoke under condition of anonymity due to concerns it would affect their current employment. said the 1 percent cost share was potentially unprecedented for a DOE award of that size and for a recipient with that much cash flow. The official argued that. for such an exception to be legal. it must have been made by the secretary of energy. Chris Wright. himself.

“Congress decreed that cost-share waivers are only supposed to be available via a secretarial determination. They weren’t intended to be used often, and they haven’t been,” the former official said.

The DOE’s Office for Electricity defended the approach. A spokesperson said the agency “carefully evaluated procurement options and determined that a noncompetitive, sole-source award to PREPA was justified.” The spokesperson said the goals of the energy resilience fund required using PREPA.

The spokesperson acknowledged that the reduction from the standard 50 percent cost share is significant. but said the determination was made under authority provided by the Energy Policy Act. “PREPA continues to face severe fiscal constraints while maintaining responsibility for critical generation and transmission infrastructure,” the spokesperson said. “Requiring a 50 percent cost share would not have been feasible and would have delayed urgently needed grid stabilization and repair activities. undermining the core purpose of the Puerto Rico Energy Resilience Fund.”.

Even so, internal materials reflected the risk that the choices would draw scrutiny. A memo drafted by the head of the agency’s Grid Deployment Office includes a section titled “Sensitivities. ” warning that the decision to waive a 30-day congressional notice period. not seek other bids. and cut the cost share could generate negative commentary.

The memo also tied that sensitivity to the original plan for the money: the initial funds were intended to fund solar installations for multi-family housing. limited to common areas. as well as community-based healthcare facilities. It further said the “sole source designation to PREPA may raise objections to fairness, and perceived undue favoritism.”.

In earlier years, Puerto Rico’s grid problems were stark. The average resident experienced more than 70 hours of outages in 2024. When Hurricane Maria made landfall in 2017. the island’s more than 3 million residents lost power for weeks. and PREPA took more than nine months to restore power to some parts of the island. After the disaster, Congress allocated more than $17 billion to modernize the grid. Nearly a decade later, PREPA has completed very few projects with that funding, while continuing to navigate bankruptcy proceedings since 2017.

The resilience funds being redirected to PREPA are in addition to the earlier allocation. The DOE memo acknowledges that “all parties involved are in less than desirable financial condition.”

The former Biden official questioned the logic of using that money to support PREPA itself, saying DOE would plan to send these sums to PREPA given its record of federal spending.

The memo argues that competition would not have changed the outcome. It says that even if DOE had undergone a time-consuming competitive process—one estimated at 18 months—it would have ultimately selected PREPA because PREPA has sole ownership of the island’s grid. It cites “urgency” and says there is “no other entity in Puerto Rico with the breadth of capability. asset ownership. and legal mandate to execute energy emergency response. grid stabilization. and recovery projects at this scale.”.

Last month, more than 40 congressional Democrats sent Secretary Chris Wright a letter demanding answers about why the agency had redirected the resilience funding. They asked for a briefing laying out the agency’s justification for moving the funds to PREPA.

“DOE’s lack of transparency. wasteful reuse of the funding. disregard for congressional intent. and potentially illegal cancellation of contracts — combined with the resulting increase in energy poverty and loss of energy security — raise serious questions about the Department’s uses of the Puerto Rico-Energy Resilience Fund. ” the lawmakers wrote.

The lawmakers focused in particular on the use of money for a natural gas pipeline. On the DOE website. the project is described not as a pipeline itself but as “fuel supply security between San Juan and Palo Seco.” In internal documents. the DOE plainly notes it intends to allocate $50 million to construct a natural gas pipeline.

Reporting in El Nuevo Día, a Puerto Rican publication, said local authorities have already been working on building a natural gas pipeline connecting power stations in San Juan and Palo Seco, which is about 9 miles away.

The Democrats argued that the move risks locking Puerto Rico into imported fuels for years. “Trying to force a liquefied methane pipeline project onto the people of Puerto Rico would help lock in the need to import fuels — keeping methane gas prices exorbitant for decades to come. putting ratepayers on the hook for funding it. and adding to already astronomical electricity costs. ” their letter says.

For a program designed to protect low-income Puerto Ricans—especially those who can’t afford outages—what happened next is the central fear driving the backlash: that the money meant for solar and battery backup during emergencies has been rerouted into a plan centered on PREPA. fossil-fuel infrastructure. and a pipeline—at the same moment when Puerto Ricans have seen how fragile and slow recovery can be after major storms.

Puerto Rico energy resilience solar batteries PREPA Department of Energy Chris Wright natural gas pipeline Freedom of Information Act Energy Policy Act hurricanes grid modernization energy emergency