November 17, 2021.- The opening session of the VI edition of the Energy Week was attended by the executive secretary of The Latin American and Caribbean Energy Organization (OLACDE), Alfonso Blanco Bonilla and the manager of the Infrastructure and Energy sector of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Ariel Yépez, who agreed on the importance of energy transition and integration at the regional level.
The first words of the inauguration were given by the executive secretary of OLACDE, Alfonso Blanco, who reported some data on the Energy Outlook for Latin America and the Caribbean, a publication developed by OLACDE.
“We have achieved that 61% of the installed capacity in terms of power generation comes from renewable energies, even in the context of a pandemic, and we are measuring this at the level of the year 2020, we achieved that our region incorporated more than 5 GWh from solar and wind energy.”
He also reported that in the same year of operation, more than 10 GWh of generation from liquid fuels and coal have been eliminated in the region.
In this same context, he added “these actions have contributed to an important advance of almost 2 percentage points in the participation of renewable energies in the installed capacity of power generation.”
He pointed out that this action “is completely in line with what we have set ourselves in the RELAC initiative, which is to try to reach an installed capacity of 70% for Latin America and the Caribbean by 2030.”
Another important fact he mentioned in his speech was that this year “practically 10 countries have included green hydrogen in their agenda as part of the sector’s long-term planning.”
Regarding energy integration, he stated that this aspect plays an important role in the future development of Latin America and the Caribbean.
“We are proposing a series of platforms to advance in terms of integration, but clearly if we want to have the most developed energy sector possible, we have to increasingly incorporate energy integration into our agenda. We have to be clear that the new energy systems with high penetration of renewable energy with greater digitization, modernization in different terms, require much more dynamic regional markets to be increasingly efficient.”
For his part, the IDB Infrastructure and Energy sector manager, Ariel Yépez, said that the Bank has five priority areas as part of the 2025 vision: regional integration, support for SMEs “to strengthen the regional productive apparatus”, digital transformation (particularly in the energy sector), gender equality and actions against climate change.
“The IDB has prioritized its financing in energy efficiency programs, renewable energy, diversification of the energy matrix, development of new technologies such as green hydrogen and the decarbonization of other sectors of the economy such as electromobility,” he explained.
At the end of the inauguration, the day’s roundtables were held to discuss topics related to digitization and innovation in the energy sector, such as sustainable transportation, bioenergy and biofuels, sustainable cities and the integration of new technologies in the current scenario in the Latin American and Caribbean region.
The following are some of the dialogues of the day:
Guadalupe González, Director of Electricity of the National Energy Secretariat of Panama: “We are developing a distributed generation strategy, because we see a high relationship with electric mobility and the installation of solar roofs in houses to make that balance.”
“To introduce the new technologies it is necessary that multiple actors are participating. The energy policy is the first step of the foundation to give direction to the issue, but we need everyone’s support.”
Luiz Horta, professor at the Federal University of Itajubá (UNIFEI): “Latin American countries have particularly interesting conditions to produce biofuels without competing with food security, a complementary possibility to generation with renewables such as wind and photovoltaic”
Alexandra Arias, expert of the Regional Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency and representative of the Regional Electricity Integration Commission (CIER): Next week a regional report will be presented with information on the regulatory and normative issues that exist in each of the countries.
In the following links you can follow the rest of the dialogues developed on the first day of the VI Energy Week
VI Energy Week – 17/11 – TOMORROW – Panel I: Innovation in the Energy Sector
VI Energy Week – 17/11 – AFTERNOON – Panel I: Innovation in the Energy Sector
