When Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in 2017, it didn’t just tear roofs off homes and flood city streets. It wiped out the island’s centralized electrical grid, plunging nearly the entire population into darkness. For weeks—months in some places—hospitals operated by flashlight, water pumps went dry, and families struggled to stay alive without refrigeration, air conditioning, or communication.

Similarly, in 2021, a winter storm in Texas brought one of the world’s wealthiest energy producing states to its knees. Frozen gas pipelines, overwhelmed infrastructure, and poor planning left millions without heat or power during sub-freezing temperatures.

These were not failures of nature. They were failures of system design.

The question isn’t how to make these systems stronger. It’s whether we should be building entirely different ones—and as we build, how we might pay what’s due to those historically left behind.

The Fragility of Centralized Systems

Traditional infrastructure—massive, centralized, and capital-intensive—is increasingly misaligned with the inherent risks of the 21st century. Centralized grids and water systems are highly efficient when they work, but brittle when they don’t. A single, isolated fault can cascade into catastrophe. In a time of escalating climate threats—heatwaves, megafires, floods, and more—this fragility is a risk we can no longer afford.

The era of climate stability is over. Infrastructure designed for yesterday’s weather patterns is buckling under today’s extremes. The frontlines of this collapse aren’t limited to conflict zones or island nations. They include urban centers, rural communities, and the Global South.

The Energy Gap

Take away climate change, and take away natural disasters, and you still have a crisis woven into the very fabric of our existing systems. According to the United Nations, roughly 685 million people worldwide still live without electricity. Other organizations put that number much higher, citing issues of communities being connected to the grid but seeing little to no power delivered.

Electricity favors the urban, the wealthy, the privileged. Those without electricity—often those already facing poverty, discrimination, and marginalization—see their challenges perpetuated.

No electricity means no light for children to study at night, no power for healthcare, no energy to pump clean water or irrigate crops. This is energy poverty: a silent, insidious crisis that blocks progress on nearly every aspect of human welfare. And it makes communities vastly more vulnerable to climate shocks.

When disaster strikes, resilience depends on the ability to communicate, to power medical devices, to refrigerate food, to access clean water. Without electricity, none of this is possible.

This global energy gap isn’t just a development issue. It’s a security issue. It’s a justice issue. And it’s a defining, and yet overlooked, issue of our time.

The Rise of Decentralized Solar

Fortunately, our status quo mega-grids are not the only option. Another model exists—one that’s faster, cheaper, more flexible, and more just. Decentralized solar solutions like microgrids, solar-powered water pumps, and off-grid refrigeration are transforming the possibilities of energy access.

At the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF), we’ve seen firsthand what this shift looks like in practice. In Uganda, solar-powered water pumps now bring clean water directly to villages that once depended on unsafe surface water. In Benin, solar-powered vaccine refrigerators keep medicines cold at rural health clinics where grid power is unreliable or nonexistent. In Haiti, solar electricity lights up schools, providing stability and opportunity in a country grappling with crisis.

Solar project in Benin

Solar systems can be installed in days, not years. They don’t require multi-million-dollar investments or decades-long planning cycles. They’re resilient in ways centralized systems can never be because they’re modular, locally owned, and built for the realities of climate disruption.

Restoring Equity and Agency

Beyond the technical advantages, decentralized energy represents a shift in power in the truest sense. These technologies give communities the ability to chart their own development path, rather than wait on distant governments, utility companies, or aid organizations.

When a village owns its solar microgrid, it controls not only electricity—but its own future. Local priorities can be met with local solutions. The modular nature of these systems means that a village can start small, address immediate needs, and grow its energy capacity over time. Maintenance jobs, training programs, and educational opportunities follow.

But building agency is just part of the story. In a world where the communities most vulnerable to climate collapse are not the ones who caused it, energy is also a matter of justice and repair. That’s why we must talk about reparations.

Solar project in Haiti

The Case for Climate Reparations

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: today, the communities suffering climate change’s harshest impacts—with the fewest tools to adapt—are often those who contributed least to it.

Africa produces just 3-4% of global carbon emissions, yet it suffers some of the harshest climate impacts—droughts, floods, and extreme heat. Meanwhile, wealthy nations have built their prosperity on centuries of fossil fuel use and extractive colonial economies that drained both resources and autonomy from the Global South.

What’s owed is not charity. It’s justice.

The idea of climate reparations is gaining ground at global forums, but it must move from rhetoric to reality. Clean energy investment is one of the most direct, practical, and transformative forms this can take.

Access to energy is access to life-saving healthcare, to education, to economic opportunity. It is a platform for human rights. In this light, every solar panel installed is not a gift—it is a small, overdue act of repair.

Solar project in Uganda

Moving Forward

True resilience isn’t about making the grid bigger. It’s about making systems smarter, accessible, and locally adaptable.

Policymakers and funders must broaden their focus from megaprojects and support investment in long-term, community-owned infrastructure. Philanthropy should prioritize projects that don’t just deliver technology but build also local capacity and ownership.

We need bold ideas: restructuring incentives for green investment in the Global South, implementing carbon taxes on Global North corporations with proceeds earmarked for climate-impacted regions, and embedding climate justice in every decision about infrastructure and development.

The future isn’t just something to survive—it’s something to shape. And the power to do so belongs to all of us.