FOR years Chile has been floundering about in search of cheap, reliable sources of fuel. Although it is the richest country in South America by many measures, it is among the poorest in energy, importing 75% of its needs in the form of fossil fuels.
Chile tried buying gas from Argentina, but its neighbour eventually reneged on its contracts. It has built two liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants, which have helped a bit, but LNG is expensive. The government has toyed with the idea of going nuclear, but last year's Japanese tsunami put paid to that idea. Importing gas from energy-rich Bolivia or Peru will not be an option until the three countries resolve their border disputes.
That leaves hydroelectricity as one of few realistic alternatives. Southern Chile's fast-flowing rivers already provide 40% of the country's electricity. The great hope for the future is HidroAysén, a plan to build five dams on two Patagonian waterways. They would generate more than 18,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity a year, around a third of current consumption. However, they would also require the flooding of 5,900 hectares (14,600 acres) of wilderness.
Environmentalists hate the project and have urged its owners, Spain's Endesa and Chile's Colbún, to rethink. On May 30th they won a small victory: Colbún said it would hold off seeking approval for a transmission line to link the proposed dams to Santiago, 1,800 km (1,100 miles) to the north. Endesa promptly called an extraordinary board meeting to discuss HidroAysén's future.
Some greens were quick to declare victory. However, Colbún said it was motivated not by environmental concerns but rather by the government's lack of a clear energy policy. Other electricity firms agree: Rodrigo Castillo, the head of the industry association, says the country is living through a “transmission crisis” of tight supply and high costs. Although Colbún did not reveal what exactly it wanted the government to do before proceeding with the transmission line, local energy experts speculate that it is hoping to speed up the environmental approval process, and to encourage the state to take a more active role in planning electric infrastructure.
HidroAysén may never come to fruition. The project has become a political hot potato, and its costs are rising rapidly. Many Chileans would be happy to see it fail. But few can suggest viable alternatives for the country to meet its energy needs.
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y porqué no hacen energía geotérmica o solar y dejan en paz el sur de Chile que lo más hermoso y virgen del mundo? la energía geotérmica es un recurso inagotable siendo que CHILE tiene el 20& de los volcanes activos del mundo y facilmente podría generar 16.000 MW y podríamos disponer de una importante fuente renovable DE ENERGÍA AMIGABLE CON EL MEDIO AMBIENTE ¿? o la energía solar en el norte de Chile que es donde se produce siendo que el norte es un lugar practicamente que esta despoblado, pero claro para el gobierno la plata es lo más importante y no importa hacer mierda el medio ambiete y lugares donde nunca el hombre ha pisado la tierra como es el sur de Chile que donde las aguas más autrales,limpias y virgenes del mundo.
The last sentence is astonishingly wrong. Chile has extremely high electricity prices because of almost uniquely concentrated generation and grid ownership (close to an unregulated oligopoly), combined with past heavy reliance on big hydro dams whose failure in drought years forced their generating capacity to be nearly duplicated with high-fuel-cost emergency alternatives (coal, oil, and LNG).
Yet Chile also has probably the richest array of unexploited, world-class, implementable, and highly cost-effective efficiency and non-hydro renewable resources of any OECD country. (Even a photovoltaic plant recently built without subsidy in the northern desert, where the big copper-mining loads are, beat the grid price.) But these "new renewable" cannot be exploited so long as Chile is probably the only OECD country (except Japan) to lack an independent grid operator. The incumbent monopsonists therefore get to decide who can compete with their assets. As in most countries, Chilean electricity providers are also perversely rewarded for selling more electricity, not cutting customers' bills, so they're not yet enthusiastic about end-use efficiency.
The tension between these untapped "negawatt" and "new renewable" options' competitive costs and far lower risks and the costs and risks of Hydro-Aysén becomes ever more obvious. This is also a national-security issue: a thousands-of-km powerline across thousands of people's land would be not just hard to site (regardless of national policy) but also highly vulnerable to solar storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and deliberate disruption.
Such considerations may be causing the project's promoters to rethink their competitive landscape and how best to sustain profit whilst managing risk. If so, that's excellent news for Chile.
Is a very complex issue, some of the factors to consider:
*About Chitakelindo comment about the "neoliberal" system just say that Chile is currently receiving a (relatively) large amount of immigrants of every social class, people who want to work and built their lives here, the country has its flaws, but still offers by far the best possibilities for its citizens in the neighborhood. Anyways I agree that private mining should pay more royalties for being here (especially when copper prices are record high), as a way to make last longer our natural resources and to prevent foreign currency to flood the country, causing other industries difficulties to compete. Stopping private mining is not a solution, Codelco (the state owned mine) is apparently over-staffed and has high costs, and it will have a hard time when copper prices go down.
*For the energy issue lots of people complain but very few make real efforts in their daily lives (this is talking about the environment in general). Expensive energy is one way to force people to care (the government can subsidize the poor).
*There are beautiful small rivers in central Chile and right now almost all of them have hydro electrical plants working or planned to be built, is a unique environment which is disappearing. Is not a solution to destroy till the last one for few MW more.
*The long run solution lies in the fact that population cannot grow indefinitely and we have to add value to what we export/ produce (for this expending more in education is a good start). But for the moment/as things are, maybe the best solution is going nuclear...
Thanks to the neoliberal constitution, investors in the Chilean economy have the right to be subsidized by the citizens. Investors are accustomed to being subsidized by the Chilean people. This takes the form of a state that is willfully incompetent to ensure competitive markets in the economy; and a tax policy that is just wealth transfer to the investors, who benefit of artificially low taxes financed by the mineral wealth of the country.
This is most blatant in the case of investors in the mining sector. They no only want low takes, but want the Chilean people to subsidize them with low energy cost. This takes the form of Chileans paying for energy that has externalities that they shouldn’t have to absorb.
The investors in the mining sector should pay in full the energy they need, and take their hands off the pockets of the Chilean people.
I repeat, for Chilean Government only is important high social class in Santiago. For this, Chilean people protest.
I think protests in Chile are because the way Central Goverment do things. Probably energy of Hidroaysén go to everywhere in Chile, but people who live there, won't get cheap and safe energy. They will get all problems of a big dam but won't get its benefits. This is a situation very common in Chile, where Santiago was built by wealth of Copiapó and Antofagasta, and now Aysén wealth too.
Energy Lines in South America made by an Argentinean company of Energy.
http://portalweb.cammesa.com/Descargas%20%20archivos/GEOSADI2012_04.pdf
Opposition on environmental grounds is dumb.
6,000 hectares is a piffling territory in a vast country like Chile - and such a small sacrifice would cover a third of total electricity consumption!
Orders of magnitude more wilderness would have to be commandeered (and hundreds of tons of additional cables and roads laid) to get anywhere near so much power from biofuels, solar parks or wind farms.
Or we could blow up mountains for coal and uranium, or import fracked gas (fossil fuel).
Hydro has by far the lowest environmental footprint of all viable energy sources - and it would provide a vast quantity of power output: forever. Furthermore, if solar, wind and electric vehicles were are to become mainstays, a vast hydroelectric baseload (who's output can easily and quickly be varied) provides the kind of load balancing which would make such environmental progress economically viable much sooner than in places without the hydro capacity.
Take a stand for the environment. Lobby Chile's government to facilitate construction of this (and other) hydroelectric dam(s).
I live in Southern Chile and these dams would have drastic effects on our livelihoods and our environment.
These dams would be constructed on a known fault line, potentially creating more earthquakes. We have active volcanoes in the area, with one that was in near eruption last year. Chilean Patagonia has the wildest and purest waters in the world, which would be forever contaminated due to the metals of the dams (not wise considering the world's future water crisis). We have fish populations that would cease to exist due to the prevention of fish migration. Then of course the near 3,000 mile transmission line that must be constructed to power the mines in the north, because really this is why they need so much power.
Yes, we need energy. I think smaller dams can be beneficial, but for the people of Aysen who live and work here, not huge dams to only power the government's companies in the north.
You certainly raise one very important point - adequate compensation should be given to the inevitable losers from any infrastructure project. If the electricity is going North, fish are staying in the lake and water quality is reduced, then downstreamers should be in some way compensated. Anything else is to ask for political opposition. Payments should either be financial, or take the form of local infrastructure investment/ facilitation of business investment and job creation.
In the vast lake that would be created, there would be a still greater fish population (thanks to the greater water volume and surface algae area). Fish migration issues can be mitigated - with fish ladders, fish elevators, etc. A sufficient population could be lifted upstream for breeding, and plenty could flow back downstream. Sure, there will be an impact: positive for fishing on the lake and negative downstream. But that is dwarfed by the sheer power output of the dam.
The volcanic matter is probably a non-issue - the dam is unlikely to be constructed if it is vulnerable to destruction by volcanic eruption. While the dam may aggravate earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, again, the costs are trivial next to the vastness of the power output - $2 billion of electricity annually from now unto eternity is just too much to sniff at, whatever the local earth tremors or downstream fishing issues.
Too many human lives are at stake here (ultimately, general prosperity determines quality of diets, healthcare and access to education). Get building (but remember to compensate the losers).
I'll never heard something more ridiculous like the faculty of "create more earthquakes", this is the evidencial of the brain wash of the environmentalist advertising, first: the energy its not to the cooper mines in the north because the north energy transmission system (North Interconnected System SING ) its a different one that conect the center of Chile (Central Interconnected System SIC) and this is that Hidroaysen supply (is in the mayor proportion factories and residential of Santiago), Codelco the state owned cooper company its not in the SIC so cannot recive any watt of electricity from this proyect. The really true about all this is the effectiveness of the enviorementalist to lie to the people; in the campaing you see poorer staments like "this proyect is so expensive that the cost of energy probably up more" when in reality the hidroelectricity is one of the most cheaper ways of produce energy because is a large fix cost and is all very low marginal (ie variable) cost, other statament is that "the tecnology is very old fashion, when you see europe, they dont buid anymore" when reality is that they already have so many dams, (switzerland for instance). The worst thing about this is that probably the dams never build here anymore because the lobby when the are actualy a good and efficient way to generate cheap and secure energy to garanteed growth, and the only way to defeat the poverty is with growth
As we have seen during the last years, the EIA of HidroAysén has never been serious, especially for what concerns building the dams on the fault. Thus, saying that the project would not go along if it would be dangerous is blindly believing in those who have shown to be highly incompetent.
What concerns me the most, is those who believe that you can actually monetarily compensate the construction of a dam and the loss of thousand of jobs and livelihoods.
That before the possibility of an earthquake and the further wave that would reach Aysén in less than 30 minutes, you are talking about $2 billion a year, as if that would give a value for all the human lives that could be potentially lost. Doing such trade-offs is misguided and dangerous.
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"metals from dams forever contaminating waters" ?? Please explain
Poverty kills - more than anything else.
Burning coal kills - both in mining (which also pollutes rivers) and in the cancer caused by particulate emissions.
Burning oil and natural gas means high risk of contamination of seas and groundwater - along with respiratory conditions and global warming.
Nuclear power has the potential to go badly wrong if not competently managed.
Solar would be orders of magnitude more damaging to the environment - requiring much more land to be taken and producing large quantities of toxic waste (the solar panels themselves at end of life). Wind would require many more tons of concrete, many more miles of cable, and orders of magnitude more land. And whilst imposing a higher environmental burden, both solar and wind are an order of magnitude more expensive than hydroelectric.
Hydroelectric will reduce downstream water quality only during initial construction - if you have any doubts, see Switzerland or Norway. Hydroelectric will not devastate downstream fish populations - there are tried and tested mitigations which allow continued fish migration at trivial cost. Hydroelectric will hurt some livelihoods down stream - but the vast energy wealth will create far greater wider prosperity, which will feed into such socially desirable things as education and healthcare - countless lives will be saved. A vast body of water on land which is not productive today, will create many new livelihoods - with massive fish stocks (see the vast fishing industry on lake Nasser), and the wider environment will be vastly improved with the construction of this dam.
I, like naomi.sinrepresas, will be one of the very few individuals to be effected first hand by these dams. With a total country population of 17,067,369 (July 2012 est., CIA Factbook), the population of the affected Aysen region is merely 104,843. So, all of you that feel this is a great idea, due to the minute ecological impacts, the low rates of contamination, the increase in jobs, etc., come live here. Come make your home in a wild and free land, with the biggest supply of fresh water around the world. Chile has the opportunity to use technologies that are cutting edge (think tidal turbines, see http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/4213223 for a brief intro), and not rely on a design 50 years in the making that many areas of the world are currently abandoning and destroying (see http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2007-05-02-washington-da...). The studies have not be conducted correctly, the people involved in both government and private industry are not without their own agendas, and the kicker is none of them will have to look out their back window and see it, or listen to the crackling of power lines running through their towns all the time. And to he who said its not for the mines, keep on keeping on you...it all comes out in the wash.
Ok then: with only 5% of the dam's electricity revenue, the dam could give $1,000 (annually, lifelong) to every current resident of the Aysen region.
Is that enough to compensate for the inconvenience and "cackling" of power lines? (I bet that would be enough to buy popular support - in which case such compensation is worthwhile for the wider environmental benefits it facilitates.)
Again, tidal turbines are worse for the environment as well as being less economical - with far more steel, concrete and cabling needed to generate and distribute an equivalent amount of power. I'm not sure about the current situation in the US (besides the gas glut), but there is heavy investment in and expansion of hydroelectric in Europe (especially in Scandinavia, Switzerland, Austria, France, Italy and Scotland). Russia's rapidly expanding hydroelectric output, as is Turkey, India, China and all of Eastern Asia.
The Andes offer phenomenal quantities of water falling through tight valleys over vast vertical distances - hydroelectric is Chile's greatest energy resource. With hydroelectric investment (both large and small scale), Chile can have abundant cheap and clean energy, host modern data centers and a thriving IT industry, have a thriving manufacturing sector, enjoy cheap electric domestic heating and cooking (as in Scandinavia), and be one of the first mass adopters of electric transport. The wider economic benefits will allow for better health, better education, better careers and more environmental protection - just witness the rise of organic food, falling CO2 emissions, improving water quality, falling pollution levels and reforestation of Europe and the US.
Yes, hydroelectric involves sacrifice - as with all energy generation and economic development. Yet hydroelectric is both the cleanest and most profitable option open to Chile - many other (developed) countries can only dream of having such vast green energy resources.
Interesting that you mentioned ¨compensation¨. The government has ignored this region and its people for decades only with the discovery of natural resources -fish and fresh water- have they started to take notice. The government makes millions of dollars everyday with the extraction and exportation of the resources in Aysen. One would think that this would make this region modern and developed. Not quite. The average citizen makes between $3-$4 an hour, working more than 40 hours a week, while living expenses are extremely high. Rent is about $400/mo, high food prices (most grow their own food to avoid paying such high amounts) transportation is high due to gas prices, $7/gallon and the list goes on.
If the people aren´t getting compensated now, they sure as heck know they won´t be compensated if these dams go in and they will be left in the same economic situation, but with an extremely changed environment.
¨Solar would be orders of magnitude more damaging to the environment - requiring much more land to be taken and producing large quantities of toxic waste (the solar panels themselves at end of life).
I think first, it´s really important that you know the geography and make up of Chile. I suggest reading up on the Atacama desert and maybe this article. http://www.emol.com/noticias/economia/2012/05/14/540520/estadounidense-a...
I agree completely. Saying that the ¨costs are trivial¨ because the gain will be billions of dollars a year while those costs may be the loss of thousands of lives (gee thanks)-this is indeed very dangerous. This is an example of the psychopathy of the government of China.
Look at the environmental effects of the Three Gorges Dam in China.
I think SMALLER dams are okay and when they benefit the people of the area. Not HUGE dams to power the entire northern part of a country over 3,000 miles away. These dams will affect thousands of lives. The atacama desert (in the north) is closer and the solar energy projected is greater. This all comes down to politics and money. The money has already been invested in the dams. The people aren´t fools.