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On Tuesday, Rep. Víctor Parés Otero, who leads the Government Committee in the island’s House of Representatives, stated that passing legislation to establish the role of the Office of the Energy Czar will be a top priority in the early days of the Legislative Assembly that convened on Monday.
The lawmaker representing District 4 (San Juan) indicated that his committee will commence the assessment of the initiative to create the energy czar position and move forward with its approval because “we view it as one of the most critical pieces of legislation.”
Both Gov. Jenniffer González Colón and House Speaker Carlos “Johnny” Méndez Nuñez have affirmed that this czar position is a legislative priority.
Alongside the reconstruction of the island’s energy framework, the czar will oversee the system while simultaneously “developing a backup infrastructure such as batteries that are currently under evaluation for installation,” remarked Parés, a member of the Energy Transformation Committee established by the governor.
The legislator emphasized that the role of an energy czar has been effectively utilized in the United States, noting the example of then-President Richard Nixon’s establishment of the Office of Energy Policy (which later evolved into the Federal Energy Office and then the Federal Energy Administration) during the 1973 Arab oil embargo. A few years afterward, the FEA was combined with another agency to create the U.S. Department of Energy.
