Puerto Rico is a Caribbean island with an area of about 3,500 square miles. The Island is 99% dependent on fossil fuels for transportation and electricity, but there are no fossil fuels in PR. The Island’s has an inefficient and irresponsible energy use, and the demand increased dramatically in the 90s. The social, environmental and economic costs of current energy sources and practices are too high.

There is an urgent need for a social and technological transition to a new culture of social and environmental justice, based on sustainable practices and technologies. Solutions being sought and implemented are mostly economic, and in many times short term in nature.

In 1980 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences concluded that “Puerto Rico, in dealing with its own energy problems, should grasp its opportunity to become an international energy laboratory, seeking and testing solutions especially appropriate to the oil-dependent tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world.

Puerto Rico did not become the international energy laboratory it could have been. And after the initial uproar created by high oil-prices and short-term strategies vanish, we fall again in the complacency of “acceptable” oil prices. We remain waiting, as if the answer to our oil dependency problem could be imported.

This paper will discuss the Puerto Rican context as an example of Un-Sustainable practices, and present the results of a recent study that establishes that the Island has enough renewable energy resources to supply most of its energy needs. The challenges for a sustainable energy future are not only technical, or created by resource availability, the challenges are also, and mainly, social and environmental in nature.