When Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017, the storm exposed the fragility of the island’s electric grid. Entire communities went months—and in some rural areas, over a year—without reliable power. As the new private grid manager struggled to restore electricity, some residents became visionaries and advocates of a more resilient, sustainable energy system. Others created their own solutions.

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Those hard-earned lessons are the foundation of a new UMass Amherst project connecting Puerto Rico and Western Massachusetts through a shared conversation about energy resilience, climate justice and community leadership.

Puerto Rican Power: Networking Across the Diaspora to Design Energy Resilience brings together researchers, students and community organizations in Puerto Rico and Holyoke to explore how communities across the diaspora can learn from one another while strengthening more equitable energy systems. The initiative is funded by the UMass Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies.

The effort recently hosted “Borikua Power: Building Energy & Climate Resilience Across the Diaspora,” a bilingual forum held July 13 at Holyoke Media that featured community leaders, researchers and energy advocates from Puerto Rico and Holyoke supported by the UMass Energy Transition Institute (ETI). But organizers say the event is just one step in a longer-term effort to build lasting partnerships.

The initiative grew from years of collaboration and work across disciplines. Carolina Aragón, associate professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning (LARP), teaches graduate design studios exploring how communities can better understand local energy systems and imagine public spaces that incorporate clean energy projects while creating broader community benefits. Andrea Méndez Cerame, a Master of Landscape Architecture candidate and one of the project’s leaders, took the studio last fall, which laid the foundation for her work on the effort.
 

At the same time, an interdisciplinary course co-taught by Associate Professor Eve Vogel, Extension Professor Christine Hatch and recent doctoral graduate Pedro Matos-Llavona in the Department of Earth, Geographic, and Climate Sciences, introduced students to many of the Puerto Rican community leaders who would later become partners in the initiative.

The project emerged by bringing together Aragón’s design-thinking framework, Vogel’s connections on the island and Méndez Cerame’s research, organizing and relationship-building—inspired by her experiences following Hurricane Maria. 

“In the face of economic crisis, environmental injustice and increasingly frequent climate disasters, communities across the island have developed models of energy sovereignty, mutual aid and disaster recovery that offer valuable lessons far beyond Puerto Rico,” Méndez Cerame says.

She currently works alongside Professor Krista Harper and Assistant Professor Nick Caverly in the Department of Anthropology and LARP Associate Professor Camille Barchers on the Holyoke Community Energy Project, a collaboration among ETI, OneHolyoke CDC, Neighbor to Neighbor Holyoke and other organizations seeking to engage residents in co-designing sustainable and equitable energy solutions.

Holyoke boasts the highest per-capita Puerto Rican population of any city in the continental U.S. Both Holyoke and Puerto Rico have experienced environmental injustice, aging infrastructure and growing conversations about building more resilient energy systems, creating common ground for collaboration.

“Too often, conversations about Puerto Rico focus on what the island lacks, reinforcing one-sided models of knowledge exchange rooted in colonial dynamics,” says Méndez Cerame, a native of Ponce, Puerto Rico.

Rather than viewing the island only through the lens of disaster recovery, the project highlights its leadership in community-driven energy innovation. Those solutions include neighborhood-scale solar and battery systems, community education efforts and networks of engineers, advocates and cooperatives working to transform the territory’s energy future.

Aragón, whose Energy Transition Landscapes studios emphasize community-led approaches, says Puerto Rico’s experience has value far beyond the island. 

“They’re being leaders,” she says. “They’re farther ahead of the game than we are in being proactive in their energy conversations and in how they’re shaping their system.”

For Vogel, the biggest lesson isn’t that Holyoke should copy Puerto Rico’s technical solutions, but that communities can learn from its culture of organizing and self-determination.

“There’s a sense of inspiration,” Vogel explains. There’s “a history of asking hard questions of their government and their economy, and who’s benefiting.”

The collaboration is creating opportunities for ideas to flow in both directions. Holyoke’s municipally owned utility, for example, has prompted conversations about whether locally governed energy systems could offer lessons for Puerto Rico.

“I think there’s potential for maybe some conversations and experiments that could be super exciting,” Vogel notes.

Organizers hope the relationships forged through the project will help communities in both Puerto Rico and the Pioneer Valley become better prepared for increasingly frequent climate disasters while advancing energy justice—not by importing solutions, but by collaborating for the common good.