It is time for the oversight board and the governor to give up the fantasy that the debt can be paid without harming Puerto Rico’s economy, pensioners, and electrical system recovery. Overly optimistic assumptions contributed to PREPA’s bankruptcy. More of the same will not solve its problems.

Puerto Rico could experience a spike in its electricity bills for the next 35 years if a debt restructuring proposal is accepted by a federal bankruptcy judge in New York.

On Wednesday Gov. Pedro Pierluisi announced that Genera PR will officially take over the remains of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority and finish privatizing electrical generation on the archipelago.

Puerto Rico announced Sunday that it plans to privatize electricity generation, a first for a U.S. territory facing chronic power outages as it struggles to rebuild a crumbling electric grid.

Debt restructuring efforts for the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s $9 billion debt have come to a new standstill after almost six years of negotiation. Multiple failed attempts to exit bankruptcy have led nowhere.

Almost $9 billion in bad debt and a half-century of high electricity prices hang in the balance in Puerto Rico.

On the same day it was set to expire, the Puerto Rico Public-Private Alliances granted LUMA Energy an extension of its provisional contract that will only end once the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s debt restructuring is completed.

Three days before LUMA Energy’s contract is set to expire, the Public-Private Partnerships Authority requested authorization to extend LUMA’s provisional contract until the debt restructuring process for the publicly owned Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority is finalized.

Teachers and electrical workers in Puerto Rico are calling for protests outside schools on November 30, the day that LUMA Energy’s contract is set to expire, in hopes that the government cancels the company’s impending 15-year contract.

Puerto Rican legislators from New York and local activist groups joined forces on Thursday to repudiate the Puerto Rican government’s contract with LUMA Energy and ask Gov. Pedro Pierluisi not to grant the company control over the archipelago’s electrical system for the next 15 years.

As Hurricane Fiona bore down on Puerto Rico two weeks ago, the U.S.-imposed fiscal control board and the U.S.-based judge who handles the public electric utility’s debt restructuring deal forced Puerto Rican lawyers to file motions even as the archipelago was experiencing an island-wide blackout.

On Sunday, August 28, a coalition of Puerto Rican independence groups and their allies gathered outside a hedge fund’s office building in Midtown Manhattan to protest its predatory lending practices.

After seven consecutive increases, the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau has announced the first reduction in the price of electricity since 2021. The decrease went into effect on Monday, August 1.

While intense public pressure led to the worst parts being left out of the debt adjustment plan, many Puerto Ricans still view it as only leading the archipelago further into ruin through ever-expanding budget cuts and austerity measures.

On Monday, nonprofit public-interest environmental group Earthjustice released a statement condemning energy company AES-Puerto Rico for seeking to transfer ownership of its notorious coal plant in Guayama to the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA).

Far from slowing the pace of construction on Puerto Rico’s coasts to address climate change, as experts have requested, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi’s administration hit the accelerator to approve construction permits along the coasts.

Puerto Rico’s nearly five-year bankruptcy battle was resolved Tuesday after a federal judge signed a plan that slashes the U.S. territory’s public debt load as part of a restructuring and allows the government to start repaying creditors. The plan marks the largest municipal debt restructuring in U.S. history

One way that environmental activist Ruth Santiago and some of her neighbors in the Jobos Bay area have sought to call attention to the injustices they face is in the documentary ‘The Power of the People: A Collective Struggle for Life and the Environment’

“It is imperative that the federal government heeds the calling of civil society organizations that have been denouncing the terrible negotiation that has taken place in this contract,” said Dr. Adi Martínez-Román, Director of Operations of the UPR Resiliency Law Center.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A sudden power failure left more than 337,000 customers in the dark across Puerto Rico late Wednesday, enraging many who were recovering from a massive outage that hit the U.S. territory just days ago.

At a Friday press conference, LUMA Energy CEO Wayne Stensby claimed that the company projected that they would be able to restore electricity to remaining customers by 6 p.m. Friday night.