After Hurricane Maria razed the electrical grid in Puerto Rico nearly six years ago, there was a lot of talk about making the energy system more resilient in the face of climate change and sure-to-occur future calamities.
“In practice, the opposite occurred,” says Northeastern doctoral candidate Alaina Kinol, who with professor Laura Kuhl co-authored an analysis published this July in Current Research in Environmental Sustainability.
The researchers say the aftermath of the Category 4 hurricane actually reinforced prevailing power structures and technological systems.

“This is an enormous…