Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed closing down a coal plant that provides 20 percent of Puerto Rico’s electricity.
The AES plant located in Guayama is a primary energy supplier for the island. During a House Natural Resources Committee hearing, the representative said, “I want to debunk… ‘chicken little’ arguments on how if we would close the coal plants, it would cause catastrophic effects for the energy supply on the island.” She went on to claim that “AES could close tomorrow while keeping the lights on and preventing price increases on the island.”
To which Alex Epstein, founder of the Center for Industrial Progress, said, “Energy is the industry that powers every other industry. The lower cost and more reliable energy is, the lower cost and more reliable everything is, and vice versa. I just want to stress that Puerto Rico’s energy situation is terrible, and one of the reasons I want to testify today is nobody is talking about that.”
Epstein later commented on a Tweet Ocasio-Cortez posted, claiming that the power outages Texas faced earlier this year are a result of not implementing the Green New Deal. “…plenty of places around the world can deal with hot and cold when they have enough reliable, resilient electricity. Texas defunded reliable, resilient electricity, including winterization, to pay tens of billions of dollars for unreliable solar and wind that don’t work when you need them the most.”
