Governor Pedro Pierluisi said he was not in favor of the Electric Power Authority’s (PREPA) proposal to increase the cost of the electricity bill.
“Nobody wants an increase in light and I take myself with me. Who wants more light? Because of the information that has emerged, this is only and exclusively linked to fuel costs. It is not motivated by administrative inefficiency, ” the governor said at a news conference in Bayamón.
PREPA asked the Energy Bureau to increase its electricity bill by 2.14 cents per kilowatt hour which, if approved, would be reflected in the April-June quarter. PREPA attributed the proposed increase today to the fact that in the first quarter of this year, between January and March, fuel and energy purchase costs increased.
The increase is now in the hands of the Energy Bureau. The governor asked this entity to “verify” that the increase in effect corresponds to fuel costs.
“It is a regulatory body set up to ensure that things are properly dealt with in PREPA and who will determine who has the final say on any tariff increase,” he said.
He stated that, in the short and long term, the alternative is “to come from fossil energy”.
“We must comply with public energy policies that require 40% of energy to come from renewable sources by 2025,” he said. “The renewable resource is not only the cleanest, it also has fixed costs. It cannot be subject to rising oil costs. People are seeing how gasoline is getting more expensive because oil costs are not controlled by us. The solution is to stop burning oil and use the sun ”.