In 2017, Hurricane Maria devastated the archipelago of Puerto Rico. A month after the storm, less than 8% of roads were open. Five months after the storm, a quarter of residents still had no power. Though Fernando Tormos-Aponte, assistant professor of sociology in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, had no background in energy restoration research at the time, he knew he had to do something to help his home.
“This disaster inspired my yearslong journey investigating what it takes to restore energy through a social science lens,” Tormos-Aponte says. “Who gets prioritized and who gets left behind?”
Energy is a matter of life and death. Impacting everything from hospitals to grocery stores, a prolonged power outage means critical resources are unavailable to those who need them most. And those outages are increasing in both frequency and length. Thus, there is an urgent need to understand who are the most impacted and how their needs can be addressed.
Tormos-Aponte and his collaborators developed and improved measurements of vulnerability to disasters, mortality from disasters and geolocation of data that can be used anywhere. This research provides a framework for energy restoration in a multifaceted and equitable way that involves both the community and government policies.
“There are pathways to energy reliability and energy democracy that we can use to guide our policy making and our work moving forward.”
“The impact of this work is undeniable,” he says. “There are pathways to energy reliability and energy democracy that we can use to guide our policy making and our work moving forward.”
One way of working toward energy reliability is through community-led infrastructure development for energy and sustainability. Installing a single solar panel system in one community could mean access to clean water, food and health care even after a disaster. By working directly with those affected to implement solutions, Pitt is developing grounded expertise and community-engaged research practices that can go beyond a single disaster.
“Thriving communities and a healthy planet are not mutually exclusive,” Tormos-Aponte says. “We don’t have to choose a dirty planet in exchange for a strong economy.”