Key Ideas: Resiliency Law Center’s strategy
- The Resiliency Law Center advances to influence equitable climate and energy policy outcomes by strengthening advocacy, improving access to public information, and supporting communities to actively shape renewable energy, transparency, and climate-resilient policy decisions. Energy and climate decisions in Puerto Rico are often made through opaque legislative and regulatory processes that are difficult for communities to access or influence. These decisions represent a critical and time-sensitive window that will determine Puerto Rico’s energy trajectory for decades. According to our expert consultations, this complexity and lack of transparency limits public participation, slows renewable energy adoption, and restricts challenges to policies that reinforce grid fragility and fossil fuel dependence.
- Puerto Rico’s renewable energy targets and public policy hold that the island should reach 100% renewable energy by 2050. Nevertheless, Puerto Rico’s electricity system remains highly centralized and fossil-fuel dependent, with 94% of generation coming from oil, natural gas, and coal. Renewables account for just 7% of supply1, despite a statutory mandate to reach 40% renewables by 2025 and 100% by 2050.2 Energy resilience and reliability depend not only on technology (e.g., distributed solar and storage) but also on public policy, regulatory frameworks, and community participation that determine which solutions are allowed, funded, and scaled.3
- The Resiliency Law Center actively drives accountability and enforcement through legal and policy advocacy and constituent empowerment to increase energy resilience and reliability and uphold climate policy. Through strategic legal action, public comments, and coordinated advocacy, RLC supports enforcement and implementation of existing climate and energy laws. The RLC seeks to democratize policy information by developing legislative monitoring platforms, accessible policy summaries, and public briefings. These tools translate complex energy and climate legislation into actionable information for communities and civil society organizations. Finally, through capacity building and the democratization of policy information, RLC trains community leaders and nonprofit organizations in legislative advocacy so they can collectively advocate for renewable energy, transparency, and climate-resilient policies, while building civic infrastructure for sustained policy engagement and accountability.
Energy Resilience as a Governance Challenge: Policy, Transparency, and Participation in Puerto Rico
As Puerto Rico’s centralized electricity system continued to experience outages and policy volatility following the passage of Act 17-2019—which established renewable energy targets—and Act 33-2019—which mandated climate mitigation and adaptation planning—RLC has shifted the focus of its efforts toward sustained engagement in climate and energy governance. Recognizing that decisions about renewable energy targets, fossil fuel expansion, and grid modernization are determined through legislative and regulatory processes, RLC developed a structured legislative monitoring platform and began producing accessible policy summaries to reduce information asymmetries between policymakers and civil society. Over the past two years, RLC has tracked more than 200 climate- and energy-related measures and distributed monthly updates to over 1,000 subscribers, building a civic infrastructure for informed participation in energy decision-making.
Complementing its monitoring work, RLC has invested in advocacy training and legal enforcement mechanisms to ensure that existing climate and renewable energy mandates—particularly those established under Act 33-2019—are implemented rather than diluted or delayed. Through workshops, public comment support, and strategic litigation aimed at advancing statutory climate planning requirements, RLC works to increase the likelihood that renewable-supportive policies are enforced and that fossil fuel lock-in risks are scrutinized. By targeting governance bottlenecks rather than deploying infrastructure directly, RLC links energy resilience and reliability to institutional transparency, accountability, and community participation.
RLC integrates legislative monitoring, advocacy training, and legal intervention into a coordinated strategy that operates across multiple policy windows, enabling sustained civic oversight and strengthening accountability in energy and climate governance processes. This approach aims to ensure that as billions of dollars in federal reconstruction funding and grid modernization decisions move forward, communities have both the information and legal tools needed to influence outcomes. By strengthening the governance conditions under which energy infrastructure is planned and regulated, RLC seeks to create durable, system-wide improvements in renewable integration, grid resilience, and long-term reliability across Puerto Rico.
Resiliency Law Center’s Strategies
Legislative Monitoring & Policy Transparency
RLC develops and maintains tools to monitor, analyze, and disseminate information on environmental, climate, and energy-related legislation in Puerto Rico. Over the past two years, it has operated a legislative monitoring tool that tracks bills, resolutions, and executive actions across topic areas such as renewable energy, climate planning, fossil fuel expansion, land use, and environmental protection. The platform organizes measures by chamber, topic, and procedural status, and provides plain-language summaries and direct links to official legislative documents.
In addition to maintaining the monitoring tool, RLC produces periodic legislative updates, alerts, and synthesized reports that document trends in climate and energy policymaking. These materials are shared through mailing lists, partner organizations, and public-facing communications, with the aim of enabling earlier and more informed participation by community groups, nonprofits, and advocates. This strategy is intended to improve transparency and accountability in energy-related decision-making, which RLC views as a prerequisite for advancing resilience-oriented policies with direct implications for emissions reduction and infrastructure investment decisions.
Community Capacity Building and Advocacy Training
RLC engages in structured capacity-building efforts to help communities and civil society organizations participate more effectively in climate and energy governance. In the last two years, it has delivered workshops and trainings focused on legislative processes, public policy advocacy, drafting public comments, preparing testimony for hearings, and engaging with policymakers and media. These trainings are designed to be practical and applied, often combining informational sessions with guided exercises tailored to current legislative issues.
Beyond standalone trainings, RLC provides ongoing accompaniment to participating organizations and community leaders as they apply advocacy skills in real policy contexts, including support in identifying priority issues, understanding procedural entry points, and coordinating advocacy actions across groups. The emphasis of this strategy is on skill transfer and empowerment, with the goal of building durable advocacy capacity that persists beyond RLC’s direct involvement and supports sustained engagement on energy and climate policy. This approach contributes to long-term community power building and governance participation.
Legal Support and Strategic Policy Intervention
RLC also deploys legal expertise to support climate- and energy-related advocacy, particularly where government agencies fail to meet statutory obligations. Over the past two years, this work has included legal analysis, representation, and procedural interventions related to climate planning, environmental regulation, and public participation requirements. These efforts are often closely linked to RLC’s advocacy and monitoring work, with cases emerging from issues identified through legislative tracking or community engagement.
In parallel, RLC provides legal guidance to nonprofit organizations and community groups navigating regulatory and administrative processes connected to climate adaptation, land use, and environmental protection. This strategy supports the enforcement of climate and environmental laws and helps prevent policy backsliding that could lock in fossil fuel dependence or increase vulnerability to climate impacts. RLC frames this legal work as a complement to advocacy and capacity building, reinforcing the institutional foundations needed for long-term energy resilience and emissions mitigation.
Evidence of Resiliency Law Center’s Ability to Execute Its Activities
Legislative Monitoring and Policy Transparency
We have a positive impression of RLC’s execution of its legislative monitoring and policy transparency work, particularly given limited staffing and financial resources. Over the past two years, RLC has tracked more than 200 climate-, energy-, and environment-related measures in a single legislative cycle and produced consistent monthly updates translating complex developments into accessible summaries for over 1,000 subscribers, as well as partner briefings. In 2025, RLC published 17 policy pieces and dedicated more than 650 hours to advocacy and monitoring, coordinating with over 20 allied organizations and facilitating more than 500 instances of citizen participation across 70 municipalities. We view this sustained pace and reach as evidence of strong execution. External organizations rely on RLC’s tracking to inform advocacy, invite RLC to provide trainings, and partner on synthesis reports, indicating the tool is actively used beyond the organization.
Community Capacity Building and Advocacy Training
We have a favorable impression of RLC’s ability to deliver advocacy training tied to live policy processes. From 2023-2025, RLC conducted workshops on legislative engagement, public comment drafting, and hearing participation, including 18 structured workshops in 2025 and reaching approximately 50 organizations per year. Trainings include practical exercises and follow-on support, and RLC reports measurable knowledge gains through pre- and post-assessments and high participant satisfaction. Approximately 40 participants completed a certification track, indicating efforts extend beyond one-off workshops toward sustained capacity building. Repeat engagements, coalition invitations, and curriculum refinement based on feedback indicate credible execution.
Legal Support and Strategic Policy Intervention
We have a positive impression of RLC’s ability to execute legal and policy interventions in complex administrative and judicial processes related to climate and energy governance. In recent years, RLC has pursued legal actions aimed at enforcing statutory obligations and agency compliance with environmental and climate laws. RLC reports that in 2022, it had to file a mandamus to the Court of First Instance in San Juan to order the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment to implement Act 33-2019. That mandamus resulted in the publication of the Draft of the Climate Change Mitigation, Adaptation, and Resilience Plan. In 2025, RLC increased the number of municipalities impacted by approximately 15% and more than doubled the number of communities served year-over-year through their legal assistance, organizational support, and community trainings on disaster recovery processes, property rights, and environmental governance. Its in-house legal capacity enables sustained litigation and strategic policy engagement despite resource constraints.
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1 “In 2024, petroleum-fired power plants provided 62% of Puerto Rico's electricity generating capacity, followed by natural gas (24%), coal (8%), and renewables (7%).” Puerto Rico Territory Energy Profile, U.S. Energy Information Administration (accessed on December 31, 2025)
2 “In April 2019, Puerto Rico enacted the Puerto Rico Energy Public Policy Act (Act 17-2019) [...] This law mandates renewable energy targets of 40% by 2025, 60% by 2040, and 100% by 2050.” Ilic et al, 2024 (p. 3)
3 “The community movement emerges as a key force in this process, with examples like Casa Pueblo in Adjuntas demonstrating the feasibility of change from within communities. The “Queremos Sol” proposal aims to promote renewable energy in Puerto Rico, backed by over 100 organizations" Muñoz Vazquez, 2023 (p. 201)
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