A P R O J E C T B Y S I M O N E K R A M E R K I R S T E N H O L L A N D A L I C I A G O R E C K I S C O T T B E L D I N G

P V P R E P A R E D N E S S

Applying small scale solar solutions to disaster planning in the Caribbean BACKGROUND Caribbean islands are highly vulnerable to severe tropical storms and hurricanes. Such natural disasters can devastate existing electricity sources, as seen by the major disruptions in grid operations after Hurricanes Irma and Maria in Puerto Rico and Barbuda in the late summer and early fall of 2017. In Puerto Rico, Hurricane Irma destroyed 90 percent of the grid, leaving no means of communication between communities and centralized aid relief.1 While telecommunications companies were able to quickly establish emergency hotspots and repair cell phone towers, many communities did not have electricity to power their phones, and therefore were unable to access emergency communications and pertinent aid coming in from centralized locations.2

Furthermore, the primary method of backup generation in Puerto Rico consisted of fuel-based generators, which, along with diesel required to operate them, are largely imported.3 In the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, however, the island experienced significant shortages in both generator and fuel supply, leaving residents with few or no options for backup electrification. While Irma and Maria wreaked havoc primarily in Puerto Rico and Barbuda, other Caribbean islands are similarly vulnerable to potential catastrophe brought on by future storms.

As storms continue to increase in frequency and intensity due to climate change, and threaten grid operations of islands throughout the Caribbean, vulnerable countries like the Dominican Republic must have off-grid electricity generation available to provide critical services in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. Our objective was to assess potential methods of incorporating cost-effective, portable distributed solar power (referred to as pico solar) to meet these critical post-disaster needs by partnering with both the providers of solar products and the communities who could use them.

PROJECT OBJECTIVE The project goal was to assess a means of preparing disaster-vulnerable communities in the Dominican Republic for energy challenges posed by future hurricanes. Pico solar products, particularly those produced by US-based company Goal Zero, have been used for disaster relief in the past in hurricanes Sandy and Harvey. It is important to note however, that rather than focusing our research and pilot program in Puerto Rico and other recently affected islands, we

1 Ferris, David. ”Puerto Rico’s Grid Recovery, By the Numbers.” Energy Wire, E&E News. February 20, 2018. https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060074219 2 Fiegerman, Seth, and Paul P. Murphy. “What Cell Phone Companies are Doing to Restore Service in Puerto Rico.” CNN Money. September 27, 2017. http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/27/technology/business/puerto-rico-cell-service/index.html. 3 Fausset, Richard, Frances Robles, Deborah Acosta. “Minus Electrical Grid, Puerto Rico Becomes Generator Island.” The New York Times. October 7, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/07/us/puerto-rico-power-generators.html 1

aimed to assess the means of proactively preparing other Caribbean islands to ensure they are adequately prepared in the face of future natural disasters that may damage the electric grid.

WHY THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC? The Caribbean environment— namely its abundance of sun— led us to focus on pico solar products. The increased frequency and intensity of hurricanes, and the resulting solar variability increases after a storm, make solar generation a particularly good option.

We began by connecting with Goal Zero, the company that had donated pico solar products to communities affected by hurricanes recovery efforts in the past. Through conversations with their staff, we assessed that the biggest challenges in the aftermath of natural disasters that caused power outages were the lack of lighting for rebuilding efforts and the inability to charge mobile phones for communication with family, friends, and local relief organizations. Specifically, Goal Zero mentioned that, in Puerto Rico, the island had no electricity backup plan in place in the case of a major grid outage. Goal Zero donated a large portion of its supply chain to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of the disaster, but noted that if communities had already had these products in place, they would have been able to connect and begin rebuilding more quickly. Furthermore, a donation model, they noted, is not sustainable due to supply chain constraints and lack of resources available in the long run. They stressed the need for electricity generation technologies to be included in pre-disaster mitigation plans.

Therefore, rather than focusing on post-disaster grid rebuilding, we decided to address immediate post-disaster electricity needs such as communication and lighting and ways communities could better prepare in advance. We narrowed our scope to the Dominican Republic for several reasons. First, we had a personal connection to the country--one of our team members, Simone Kramer, is of Dominican descent and her grandmother lives in the coastal community of Boca Chica. This town is highly vulnerable to the effects of tropical storms and hurricanes, and her grandmother’s experiences offered anecdotal information about community energy access and disaster preparedness. Simone’s Dominican connections were also instrumental in helping us build out a network of contacts on the ground.

Furthermore, the Dominican Republic is highly vulnerable to natural disasters. The country ranks 27th in the world in the United Nations’ World Risk Index, which indicates a country’s vulnerability to natural disasters.4 The country sustains substantial economic losses annually due to natural hazards (shown in table below). Therefore, there is an economic incentive to prepare. Given the risk and economic considerations, we felt there would be enough motive to garner interest from local stakeholders.

4 “World Risk Report 2016.” United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security. 2016. https://collections.unu.edu/eserv/UNU:5763/WorldRiskReport2016_small_meta.pdf. 2

Average Annual Loss (AAL) by hazard5 Hazard Absolute Capital [Million stock [%] US$]

Earthquake 363.87 0.180

Wind 509.16 0.252

Storm 40.19 0.020 Surge

Tsunami 0.24 0.000

Flood 100.83 0.050

Multi- 1,014.29 0.502 Hazard

The Dominican Republic ranks among the top countries in the world in terms solar energy potential. One measure of solar potential is global horizontal irradiance( GHI). GHI measures the amount of radiation a horizontal surface on the ground receives from the sun. The higher the GHI, the more effective a photovoltaic solar installation will be at generating electricity. The average GHI in the Dominican Republic falls somewhere between 5 and 7 kWh/m2/day, with some regions approaching 8 kWh/m2/day6. Furthermore, GHI levels are consistent throughout the year, meaning solar photovoltaic installations can be used year-round.

5 “Dominican Republic: Disaster and Risk Profile.” Prevention Web. https://www.preventionweb.net/countries/dom/data/. 6 Solar GIS https://solargis.com/maps-and-gis-data/download/dominican-republic 3

We connected with local, regional, and multilateral stakeholders in a field research project that took place in Santo Domingo and Santiago (the two largest cities in the Dominican Republic) to raise awareness about portable solar technology opportunities and assess their utility in disaster preparedness. In each city, we brought together affected parties--including students, professors, business leaders, government employees, and engineers--to deliberate the means in which they could work to produce a resilient and proactive strategy for further incorporating and purchasing these products locally. Our pilot project followed a two-tiered approach, utilizing a partner university and their connections and resources as a base in both cities. The first tier entailed student trainings and community engagement and outreach, while the second tier comprised of convenings of stakeholders--students, professors, engineers, business leaders, and government officials--in both Santo Domingo and Santiago.

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PARTNERSHIPS

In order to centralize and streamline our project, we partnered with Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra (PUCMM), a Catholic university with campuses in both Santo Domingo and Santiago, to enact this project. PUCMM was instrumental in helping us connect with key local constituencies and stakeholders in the electricity industry, the government, and disaster planning and preparedness. We hosted a technical training session with university students at each campus in an effort to both raise awareness of pico solar products and their potential use in disaster planning, while also learning from them about current practices in disaster planning in Dominican communities, and more generally about the state of electricity in the country.

PUCMM in Santo Domingo also connected us with the rural community of San Antonio de Guerra about 40 minutes outside the city, where we had the opportunity to meet with leaders at the local school and community center, as well as community residents to discuss their thoughts on the incorporation of pico solar products into disaster planning and preparedness. The products used for the trainings and demonstrations were donated by Goal Zero, a U.S.-based pico solar producer, and we, in turn, donated these products to the PUCMM campuses in Santo Domingo and Santiago so students can continue to work with them on projects to incorporate them into the solar energy and disaster planning landscape in the country.

We also engaged in outreach with Richard Hansen, who runs Soluz Dominican, a local pico solar company that produces lighting and cell phone charging equipment. Unfortunately, the timing of our trip did not align with Richard’s or his colleague’s schedule, so we were unable to meet with them in person, but they were instrumental in providing more information on local pico solar production, solar use in the Dominican Republic more generally, and specifically on importation considerations for pico solar products and batteries.

When on the ground, we hosted stakeholder convenings at each PUCMM campus, where we brought together diverse groups of students, industry leaders, professors, and government officials in an effort to gain diverse perspectives and opinions about pico solar and its usefulness in preparing for future disruptions to the electric grid.

THE TRIP During the course of 5 days, we met with three types of groups in two cities and one rural community, offering variety in both perspectives and geographic considerations. Of the two cities, Santo Domingo is located in the south of the island and offered a population who understands the coastal implications of hurricanes. Santiago is in the North of the Island, landlocked but also located on a river (which suffers significant flooding during strong coastal storms).

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By diversifying our regional assessment, we were able to compare different needs across the country — while many students in Santo Domingo were less familiar with the implications of rural energy access, those from Santiago were more versed in regular grid outages and backup battery generation. Additionally, this diversity of perspectives allowed us to understand the nuances associated with socioeconomic stratification in the Dominican Republic, and social implications of energy consumption: wealthier households have backup generation built into their apartments and homes, while middle income households are more conscious of the costs associated with blackouts and backup generation and lower-income communities generally can’t afford expensive backup generation technologies

We also met with stakeholders who understood the limitations of the current energy supply, while some in Santo Domingo did not have that first-hand experience. Overall, the breadth of understanding in our project came both from the variety of people that we met with, but also from the diversity of geography and perspectives that it offered.

THE PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSIONS WITH STUDENTS AND STAKEHOLDERS: The content of the meetings was based around a similar framework of presentation and discussion, focusing on the key project concerns, objectives, and information objectives. The introduction provided context for the project and why we chose to work in the Dominican Republic, rather than the most-recently devastated island of Puerto Rico. Referencing Puerto Rico as a “worst case scenario,” particularly the grid devastation and energy loss directly after Hurricane’s Irma and Maria, set the scene for the project objectives. Building upon this context, we discussed recent hurricanes and tropical storms in Dominican history, and current practices in disaster preparedness on the ground. The presentation then highlighted critical post hurricane needs: lighting and communication, and the proposed solution: small-scale solar products.

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We reviewed the history of these pico solar products, their different applications, and engaged the audiences with a demonstration of the typical array of pico solar products that could be useful in disaster preparedness: a solar and wind up torch and USB charger, mini string-up lanterns, small-scale panels, larger panels, and a battery. This encompassed the basic structure of the presentations, while the questions and discussion were tailored to each audience to which we spoke.

THE PRODUCTS: From a generous donation from our partner, Goal Zero, we received an extensive repertoire of pico solar products to demonstrate during our presentations in the Dominican Republic. With the goal of meeting lighting and communication needs post-disaster, we presented products that fit into two broad categories: with and without internal storage capacity. Each product either offered lighting or mobile charging, or both. The specific Goal Zero demonstration products are listed below, but we kept the presentation less specific, in order to accommodate local producers and other available options. While we did conduct a review of available pico solar technologies and products and determined that Goal Zero products are among the top of the line in terms of quality and durability, we worked to clarify that these products were just a sampling of available pico solar products currently on the market worldwide.

Product Type Storage Lighting Mobile Name Charging

Yeti 400 Battery Yes No Yes Generator

Torch Battery Yes Yes Yes Lantern

Light-a-Life Lantern No Yes No

Boulder 50 Solar Panel No No No

Nomad 14 Solar Panel No No Yes

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SANTO DOMINGO:

Student training: At the Santo Domingo campus we met with 22 civil engineering, electrical engineering, and architecture students in various stages of their undergraduate degrees. The students provided excellent insight on the various energy limitations within the city of Santo Domingo (most having grown up in the urban center), and a couple of students could speak to the impacts in their rural communities of Costanza and Manabao.

The main interest from these students came regarding the products and their functionality. The novelty of these products (due to their limited presence in the Dominican Republic currently), aided in the students’ affinity particularly for the solar powered and wind-up torch. Overall, the students were quite engaged with the topics and products. The types of questions they asked indicated their technical engagement and solution-driven nature: they inquired about charge time, purchasing locations, and contributing locations as to where these products can be made available to communities. Additionally, they indicated that these types of programs, and disaster preparedness should be offered by the government.

The students developed a plan for using the products going forward, the president of the energy club wanted to use the demonstration pico solar products for community solar projects in the surrounding rural areas. As the university is making strides in prioritizing renewable energy technology into their curriculum, the solar product donation will allow students to better understand the various applications of solar technologies. This in turn creates an engaged use base that can assist in locally driven long-term awareness and planning applications.

Community Visit: Outside of Santo Domingo, we visited the rural community of San Antonio de Guerra, and the Catholic non-profit community school, Futuro Vivo. This school promotes a variety of development initiatives in the community, and prioritizes community wellbeing activities. This is a community-oriented organization that already offers extensive programming for the families of lower socioeconomic status, including schooling and meals for the children, and supplemental education programming for the parents.

During our visit, we met with 45 community members: students at school, their parents, the nuns who run the school, teachers, and administrators. This visit was arranged but PUCMM, who is partnering with this school for further projects. This partnership offers a direct connection between the solar training as part of our project, and a long-term collaboration with PUCMM.

The visit offered a unique perspective from a community of individuals who could likely not afford the products, should they try to purchase them on their own. However, their interest in the product, and the conversations surrounding the general need for disaster preparedness, indicates there is a valid avenue to try to implement planning with pico solar at the community level.

The community at Futuro Vivo exemplified the type of place where these products could be incorporated on the community level. The school offers a central location with community

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events for both the students and the parents. The school also had established solar generation capacity, and therefore small-scale solar would easily fit into their energy supplement portfolio. The general community support from the school, and the shared sense of responsibility also lends itself towards a community-supported pico solar model.

The religious affiliation, while an asset in other communities, was not as integral here in terms of bringing the community together for that explicit purpose, but the underlying religious funding and support must be considered when assessing Dominican social structures and understanding how to integrate disaster planning on a broader scale.

Stakeholder meetings: Our meetings with stakeholders followed a similar structure to that of the student presentation and discussion. However, we condensed the “training” components and fostered a more of a discussion about how these products can be integrated into the communities.

The meeting comprised of 45 relevant energy stakeholders of the following relevant sectors: - Private energy enterprise - Government officials working in community planning, public works, and public health - Academics and professors of engineering and architecture - Civil engineers - Regulatory agencies - University Students

The discussions with the stakeholders circled around the following themes: - How durable these products are after a hurricane - Cost of products and power capabilities, reiterating their supplemental nature - Disaster planning: no significant or coordinated planning for disasters

Individual stakeholder meetings: In addition to our planned programming, we also met with relevant individuals to better understand the social and energy landscapes in the Dominican Republic.

The Catholic Church, Bishop Domingo Lengua: As part of our field project, we had the opportunity to meet with Bishop Domingo Lengua. The Dominican Republic is 95 percent Roman Catholic, with a particularly strong Church presence in the more rural and poorer parts of the country.7 This breeds an environment where many people defer to the “will of God” and rely on prayer as preparation. This is reinforced by the prominent social involvement of the church, which provides many social services and aid relief efforts. It is important to understand the cultural context when working in a region, and how to integrate solutions into this social fabric, rather than counter it.

7 “Dominican Republic.” CIA World Factbook. https://www.cia.gov/Library/publications/the-world- factbook/geos/dr.html. 9

Meeting with the Bishop gave us a better understanding of the breadth of work the church does in the country. The post-disaster aid landscape is dominated by religiously affiliated organizations. The largest aid organizations working on the ground are Catholic Relief Services and the Red Cross. After Hurricanes Irma and Maria, these two organizations worked in the most remote and affected areas, providing aid relief for devastated shelters, livelihood and food security, health, and water/sanitation/hygiene promotion.8

Beyond the tangible support provided in terms of aid and community support, the church is also an integral component of community life in the Dominican Republic. The unity surrounding a common religion, and the various aspects of community this fosters, offers a particularly valuable niche in terms of community disaster preparedness using pico solar products.

Asociación Dominicana de la Industria Eléctrica (ADIE): We also met privately with the business association of energy producers in the Dominican Republic. This meeting provided excellent insight on the current state of energy distribution, payment and tariff structures, access discrepancies, and the landscape of energy initiatives throughout the years. While the association deals with energy issues beyond the scale of the small-scale solutions this project explored, the vice-president Manuel Cabral, and his colleague have witnessed and worked on many energy initiatives, and they provided anecdotal perspectives on energy access across the country. From the private sector perspective, ADIE provided details on inefficiencies in the energy distribution system, particularly on transmission losses and payment discrepancies.

While they did not have direct feedback on small-scale solar products, they were able to offer insight on vulnerable populations with limited grid access that could benefit from community disaster preparedness through pico solar.

SANTIAGO:

Student training: At the Santiago campus of PUCMM, we met with 18 civil, electrical, and mechanical engineering students, in various stages of their undergraduate degrees. These students were more technically inclined than the students in Santo Domingo, and immediately inquired about adapting the solar panels to wire with the readily available heavy-duty lead-acid batteries already in use throughout much of the country as backup generation. Due to the greater technical interest from these students, the demonstration of the products we brought and were donating to their university clearly inspired creative community solutions, and indicated technical interest for developing more local pico solar options.

Stakeholder meeting: While not originally planned, we held an impromptu stakeholder meeting in Santiago as well, due to interest from the faculty who called together local industry leaders. The audience was slightly smaller due to the last-minute addition to our programming. We met with eight stakeholders from the university and energy sector and discussed avenues for disaster planning

8 DREF Operation Update, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/MDRDO010du1.pdf 10

through small scale solar can take. The stakeholders worked at the university, in private enterprise, and engineering firms, and expressed interest in the products and their integration into daily living. However, again, the issue of affordability was raised. We discussed our idea of a government- or Church-led community program to have these products on hand in the case of future disasters, and this group of stakeholders agreed this would be the best way to incorporate these products into disaster-vulnerable low-income communities.

LESSONS LEARNED Highlights: • There is significant community interest in disaster preparedness • Pico solar could act not only as a solution for post hurricane power loss, but also for outages that occur regularly, particularly in lower income areas. • Community members expect greater government involvement in funding these practices, leading to our need to connect further with government actors • Given that pico solar products are not yet sold at a price point that is affordable to a majority of individuals and families in need in the Dominican Republic, the best option for purchase appears to be through community centers such as churches, schools, and public clinics. They could also be excellent purchases for hospitals, although clearly noting the caveat that they do not have the capacity to run high-intensity electrical equipment.

The Dominican Electricity System While our project initially focused on the application of pico solar products for disaster preparedness, it became clear that the needs pico solar caters to in a disaster-related context, namely lighting and communication, are needs that exist on a regular basis in the Dominican Republic due to power outages that stem from various causes. In the Dominican Republic, while the island is considered to be around 98% electrified9, only approximately 70% of grid users actually pay for their electricity through formal channels. Electricity theft is extremely problematic and this increases the cost of power provision to the government, which is essentially forced to subsidize this 30% of the rate base10. When electricity reaches peak costs, as happens frequently at times of peak demand, government shuts it off to avoid the internalization of significant expense resulting from the subsidy. In certain areas, such as in Santiago, there also is a lack of sufficient generation capacity, leading to regularly scheduled outages divided by neighborhood. In areas where outages are scheduled, populations are able to prepare and work around them. However, in many areas, these outages come at unpredictable times and lengths. This is particularly problematic for businesses, hospitals, and schools. Though these institutions possess backup generation, it is often not reliable, as we witnessed during our visit to the Futuro Vivo school where all forms of backup generation, diesel, solar, and lead acid batteries, were not in service during an outage. In this context, pico solar could easily be used and incorporated to improve access to lighting and

9 “Energy Snapshot Dominican Republic.” Energy Transition Initiative, The National Renewable Energy Laboratory , Sept. 2015. 10 The Dominican electricity system is vertically integrated 11

communication for daily functions in the midst of grid intermittency. If pico solar were used on a daily basis, it could be seamlessly transitioned to use in a post-natural disaster context.

Perspectives on Disaster Preparedness By connecting with individuals in different segments of the Dominican population, including the government, universities, and community centers, we were able to assess their perspective on: • Disaster preparedness • Current disaster plans and measures in place • Interest in the use pico solar products to reduce the negative impact of grid destruction and general intermittency

I: Government Level On the government level, while there is widespread cognizance oft he need to address the negative effects of natural disasters brought on by climate change, few programs exist for disaster preparedness. That said, we met with several individuals from government ministries who expressed interest in disaster preparedness, as well as in incorporating pico solar products into their agenda. The ministry of health was particularly interested, as they operate free clinics throughout the country, and power outages are quite problematic for their operations. Pico solar products could enable these clinics to function on a limited basis when most needed in the face of outages. The national civil defense was also recommended as a potential agency of interest in carrying out greater disaster preparedness efforts, as they are currently in the process of deliberating the means to strengthen existing local efforts to increase resiliency, particularly in lower access communities.

II: University Level Universities are commonly viewed as institutions that catalyze societal change. In the Dominican Republic, approximately 30% of the population attends university, making undergraduate institutions critical actors for outreach regarding disaster preparedness and climate change topics.11 During our trip we held presentations at the PUCMM in two distinct locations, Santo Domingo and Santiago. In Santo Domingo, the engineering department is looking to create a

11For a point of comparison, in the United States, 33.4% of the population has attained a bachelors degree

US Census Bureau. “Highest Educational Levels Reached by Adults in the U.S. Since 1940.” The U.S. Census Bureau, 30 Mar. 2017, www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2017/cb17-51.html.

“Higher Education in the Dominican Republic: International Mobility and the Challenges of Expanding Domestic Provision.” World Education News + Reviews, 29 July 2016, wenr.wes.org/2013/10/higher- education-in-the-dominican-republic-international-mobility-and-the-challenges-of-expanding-domestic- provision.

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new degree program focusing on the development of renewable energy assets and environmental sustainability. Students in the various engineering programs displayed significant interest in the utility of the demonstrated pico solar products and indicated the need for increased natural disaster preparedness in the Dominican Republic. However, the distinct campuses highlight geographical and socioeconomic divides within the Dominican population. These differences indicate different attitudes towards disaster preparedness efforts, specifically pertaining to electricity restoration. In Santo Domingo, students at PUCMM generally come from wealthier areas and lived in complexes with large-scale onsite generation, reducing their exposure to outages. Also in Santo Domingo, populations are less affected by small-scale weather events. In Santiago on the other hand, storm induced flooding is more prevalent and grid infrastructure is generally less developed. High levels of electricity intermittency as well as greater grid vulnerability significantly increased the receptiveness of students on the Santiago campus towards our ideas as they seemed quite relevant to their daily lives. Additionally, socioeconomic status on the Santiago campus, the main campus, was generally more diverse than that of the Santo Domingo campus, meaning that many individuals did not live in complexes with developed generation infrastructure, and therefore those students were exposed to non weather-related outages on a regular basis.

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III: Community Level In order to assess community attitudes towards disaster preparedness and pico solar products, our team presented to a group of 45 community members of a congregation-run school for low- income youth called Futuro Vivo, in San Antonio de Guerra. During the presentation, the community members were engaged and many affirmed the need for increased disaster preparedness. At the same time, most communities outside large urban areas lack the resources to purchase products such as pico solar panels and lanterns individually, and believe the government should become more involved in funding these efforts. In order for pico solar to be incorporated into disaster planning at the community level, products would need to be purchased for or by a group of community members and stored in a community hub such as in schools or local churches. These tend to be where individuals congregate post disaster and are also locations that could use these products on a regular basis during outages. At Futuro Vivo, it was expressed that outages were extremely problematic from an educator’s standpoint. n low-income areas where outages are frequent and long, students are not always able to get through the school day. Although schools have back up generation, it is not reliable. The ability to provide basic lighting through pico solar could provide a significant positive impact to students. The church, which is quite influential and provides a large portion of community assistance in the Dominican Republic, is very interested in expanding disaster preparedness programs and could provide the funding for pico solar assets in the community context. Because they are often providing aid relief post-disaster, they would directly benefit from incorporating preparedness and resiliency measures. The biggest challenge for their support is access to producers that produce quality products at reasonable prices and will sell to the Dominican market. While the government could also become more involved in purchasing these products, it is unlikely that disaster preparedness would be prioritized for local communities given that the government would first need to provide aid for more immediate needs such as nutrition and housing.

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CONSIDERATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Climate Change

The Caribbean has always been vulnerable to all kinds of natural disasters, from hurricanes and tropical storms, to earthquakes. Climate change is specifically making storms more frequent and severe, meaning that communities in the Caribbean are increasingly vulnerable to major devastation on par with what we saw in Puerto Rico after Irma and Maria. Climate change adaptation, especially in the form of disaster preparedness, is not guaranteed even for very highly developed countries – Hurricane Sandy made that clear in 2012 in a country as wealthy as the United States. The Dominican Republic ranks 99th out of 188 countries on the Human Development Index, and therefore has fewer resources to commit to climate change adaptation from either the government or the average denizen.12

The population centers in the Dominican Republic such as Santo Domingo and Santiago stand to be at a large and increasing risk of flooding. Santo Domingo is a coastal city, while Santiago straddles a river, and both cities have vulnerabilities that prevent them from being as disaster- resistant as desired. Santo Domingo has experienced sharp population growth since 2000, and new residences are being constructed as quickly as possible, absent an enforced flood-zoning plan.13 Santiago tells a similar story, where many dwellings near the river are inhabited by low- income families and are built with necessity and convenience taking priority over flood safety, a dynamic enabled by the paucity of regulatory deterrence.14

Culture In Caribbean nations without a recent history of tropical storm devastation there is a communications hurdle in the form of convincing vulnerable communities that preparedness investment is worthwhile when other immediate needs such as procuring food and clean water seem more urgent. Puerto Rico and its suffering at the hands of Hurricanes Irma and Maria is a useful example of a scenario without sufficient preparation, but that does not prove that resiliency products will effect significant differences if employed in a similar disaster. Many communities are keenly aware of this logical distinction – especially when faced with apparent salespeople. There is also a “Storm Who Cried Wolf” component to disaster preparedness in the Dominican Republic. While the frequency of tropical storm systems in the Caribbean is a primary cause of the region’s risks and vulnerability to climate change, it also means that winds and rain are commonplace and often treated with less regard to the possibility that they will evolve into

12 UNDP. “Human Development Report 2016: Dominican Republic.” 2016. http://hdr.undp.org/sites/all/themes/hdr_theme/country-notes/DOM.pdf 13 Allen, Carl. “El Metro and the Impacts of Transportation System Integration in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic: A Report for the United Nations Commission for Sustainable Development.” Global Foundation for Democracy and Development. May 2010. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Dominican.pdf 14 Juan. Personal Interview. March 15

severe storms.15 For residents, a pattern emerges of storm warnings being broadcast over the radio and television airwaves, only to be most often followed by typical inclement weather.

Resources It can be difficult to disentangle effects of resource scarcity from those of cultural phenomena. For example, some of the commonly observed inertia in the Dominican Republic related to leaving one’s home when confronted by a tropical storm can also be explained as reluctance to leave a flooded area for fear of having one’s home looted. Data are scarce on how much these at- risk residents would be willing to do for the sake of disaster resiliency in the absence of such fears due to higher income or greater home security. A similar uncertainty animates the chicken-and-egg question of where the tendencies related to the intersection of religion and disasters arise. It is simple to assume the recovery-over- preparedness priorities in the Dominican Republic relate to the Dominican commitment to religious faith. However, this neglects a resource-based explanation centered on the limited capabilities most people possess to invest in disaster preparedness. Most people earn less than $200 per month, and as a result, those who are not in the upper income bands usually cannot afford resilient housing, disaster resiliency equipment, or flood insurance.16 There is another, more pernicious dynamic between resource scarcity and income inequality, and it often manifests itself as a national complacency. For the relatively wealthy population, systems, norms, and institutions are in place to prepare for and cope with the effects of natural disasters. Diesel generators are common for upper-scale apartment buildings, and the fuel costs associated with grid blackout compensation are factored into rent charges. In addition to storm emergencies, these generators also compensate for the intermittency of the Dominican national electric grid, leaving these families untroubled by power outages in their day-to-day life as well. Almost every family home who can afford it has invested in a battery backup system, comprised of heavy-duty lead-acid batteries and an inverter. These are expensive apparatuses, in the hundreds of US dollars. The batteries do not have an extensive effective cycle life, and must be replaced more often than advanced lithium technologies. Much like the diesel systems, these backups smooth out the imperfections in the Dominican electricity system, and in doing so, they mask many of the vulnerabilities that expose the country to potential harm from disasters. Before, during, and after the most common types of storms (which cause only minor disruptions), those with backups can endure without suffering damages or worry. This insulation has important implications for the government, since it is rare for new policies to be enacted in the Dominican Republic without the impetus of the upper classes. As such, especially considering the context in which the Dominican Republic has not experienced a truly major

15 Meteorological Department Curacao. “Hurricanes and Tropical Storms in the Dutch Caribbean.” July 2017. http://meteo.cw/Data_www/pdf/pub/Hurricanes%20and%20Tropical%20Storms%20DC.pdf 16 Dominican Today. “Dominican Republic Minimum Wage Hike Still Leaves Workers in Poverty.” DominicanToday.com. April 4, 2017. https://dominicantoday.com/dr/poverty/2017/04/04/dominican- republic-minimum-wage-hike-still-leaves-workers-in-poverty/ 16

hurricane in two decades, the threat of major disaster is underestimated, and adaptation investment and social spending are relatively low.17 Government involvement in disaster response is another dynamic that could be explained through resource scarcity – simply not having the government capacity to invest much in disaster planning – but the Dominican Republic GDP has been growing quickly, at over 5% per year since 2014, and that growth is expected to continue.18 Given that growth, the growing impacts of climate change, and the growing visibility of those impacts, government involvement in hurricane resiliency is a promising avenue, resource-wise, for pico solar investment and disaster planning more broadly.

RECOMMENDATIONS Pico solar products would be subject to a wide range of uses, based on urban-rural differences and socioeconomic inequality. Our project certainly confirmed a need for such devices in the Dominican Republic, and for applications that could easily be seen to carry over to the region as a whole. The students and stakeholders expressed interest in the products and clearly saw their value in day-to-day life; viewing the products as disaster insurance was not as immediate, but those applications became apparent in short order as well. The fundamental value of these products was therefore well established, leading to subsequent goals of initiating and expanding access. One important step is gauging the ability of the government to contribute. There is some institutional inertia at work, in addition to pressing educational and nutritional demands for government assistance that could easily draw funds away from disaster planning initiatives. However, Dominican GDP is steadily increasing and disaster resiliency efforts in both the immediate Caribbean region and in neighbors like the United States and Mexico can build momentum to encourage the Dominican government to take steps toward disaster planning. These should include a broadening of Law 57-07 that expands the tax credit on renewable energy to include small-scale solar products, as well as an exploration of programs to store small caches of disaster resiliency products at publicly accessible locations (e.g. fire stations, post offices). Government purchases of pico solar products could help spur a domestic industry in the products as well. Dominican entrepreneurs and non-profit organizers would help the entire country’s productivity by getting into the business of cheap, small-scale pico solar products. One way to encourage this is through the government avenues already mentioned. It is crucial that any industry develops enough critical mass so as to carve out reliable distribution channels throughout the country – otherwise, institutional inertia and small-scale corruption could sabotage supply chains. It is equally important to build demand, and visibility is important for this purpose. In an age of instant communication and knowledge transfer, one way to overcome this disaster preparedness inertia is by displaying pico solar at work, especially in emergency situations in other countries. It is easier than ever to share information, pictures, and videos, and the utility of pico solar products becomes apparent soon after such a viewing.

17 The World Bank. “The World Bank in Dominican Republic.” WorldBank.org. March 26, 2018. http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/dominicanrepublic/overview 18 ibid 17

Finally, success depends on recognizing the capabilities and contributions of the people. University partnership is key, especially for universities like PUCMM that are developing programs of study related to renewable energy, sustainability, and disaster preparedness. While pico solar products and disaster preparedness during the outage period are in some ways novel concepts for the country and the Caribbean region, it is important to remember that the population is already accustomed to handling energy backup systems of many types, including batteries, and the baseline level of knowledge is quite high in the area of battery engineering and effectiveness. There is a strong, though latent, level of demand, high expertise, and an increasing awareness of climate change and the accompanying value of disaster resiliency. The considerations, sensitivities, and recommendations put forward here will illuminate the path forward for pico solar products in the Dominican Republic and Caribbean.

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Appendix A: Toolkit Application of Pico Solar for Disaster Preparedness Accepted and successful models for disaster resiliency lose some local specificity in their pursuit of being broadly applicable. One element of this project is to introduce Caribbean and Dominican-specific context into disaster preparation paradigms. In addition, it is important to recognize the areas in which small-scale solar products can make positive contributions to the tenets of disaster planning and resiliency.

Risk Awareness Awareness of one’s surroundings has the least direct relationship with the functions of pico solar products, but there are related prescriptions for successful resiliency in the Dominican Republic. There are often severe, neighborhood-by-neighborhood differences in damage risk and disaster exposure, so all residents should keep an awareness or flooding map of their immediate surroundings in order to understand which areas are safer and which are more dangerous. Nutrition Assurance It only takes a little energy to turn dirty water into drinking water, and engineers have successfully harnessed the sun in order to allow pico solar devices to provide a family’s worth of potable water per day. This allows people stranded by storms to remain safe in the interim period before aid arrives and infrastructure is restored.

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Self-Protection Personal safety encompasses several factors to which pico solar can contribute. The portability of pico solar products allow families to move to higher ground or sturdier shelter with less fear of being unable to comfortably reside wherever they go. In the chaos that embodies the aftermath of a disaster, lighting and communication also provide safety and coordination to help people remain in safe areas. Communication One of pico solar’s most important capabilities is the ability to charge mobile phones even in the absence of power from the electric grid. As long as the cell phone towers are up and running, pico solar users can communicate with family, friends, schools, churches, and outside aid organizations. Community Involvement Tied to communication but reaching deeper, especially in a Dominican context, is the capacity of pico solar products to provide value to an entire community who shares them. A phone charging station can serve many people, in the same way that many can read and study under the light supplied by a single lantern. By this shared reward for pooling together, pico solar products grant access to disaster resiliency on a community scale to those segments of the population who would otherwise be frozen out of such benefits due to lack of resources.

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