
BOGOTA, Colombia– Colombia’s enthusiastic prepare for wind power growth, specifically in the resource-rich La Guajira area, are encountering severe troubles as significant firms take out and tasks delay, market professionals claim.
Margarita Nieves, supervisor of the Colombian Offshore Wind Study Network, informed The Associated Press that in spite of big targets– consisting of 1.1 gigawatts granted in a 2019 public auction– just 2 wind ranches are partly running today, with an incorporated capability of much less than 32 megawatts.
Colombia’s Mining and Power Preparation System approximates the nation can create as much as 18 gigawatts of wind power– almost double the country’s existing set up power capability of 20 gigawatts.
A number of firms brought devices and framework to Colombia around 2021 prior to protecting authorizations, yet parks stay unbuilt. Trick challenges consist of restricted grid link framework in La Guajira, current governing adjustments that decrease economic returns and complicated social and management difficulties.
Colombia, Latin America’s third-most heavily populated nation, has actually vowed to get to net-zero discharges by 2050. Head Of State Gustavo Petro, the nation’s very first leftist leader, provides himself as an ecologist and supporter of a simply power change. Yet Colombia continues to be deeply dependent on nonrenewable fuel sources– oil is its leading export and a significant resource of federal government profits.
In 2023, Italian international Enel took out from the Windpeshi onshore wind power job in La Guajira. By late 2024, EDP Renewables terminated 2 significant tasks, Alpha and Beta, 2 large onshore wind ranches in the exact same area. In Might, Colombian state-owned oil firm Ecopetrol got 9 solar and wind power tasks from Norway’s Statkraft, noting the European company’s leave from the nation. The profile extends La Guajira, Sucre, Cordoba, Caldas, and Magdalena, with a mixed possible capability of 1.3 gigawatts. Just one job is presently functional, with others anticipated to find online in between 2026 and 2027.
The step belongs to Ecopetrol’s wider power change approach to decrease dependence on oil and gas and satisfy net-zero objectives by 2050. Nonetheless, difficulties like governing hold-ups, administration worries, and possible influence on Colombia’s financial security raising inquiries regarding the change’s speed and financial results.
Nieves alerted that the circumstance is “extremely worrying,” with just 2 of over 20 organized tasks progressing. She worried the requirement to quicken governing procedures, improve consultations with Indigenous communities— significantly the Wayuu in La Guajira– and make sure adequate electric framework.
” Colombia has greater than two decades of hold-up in wind power,” Nieves claimed. “Brazil, on the other hand, has actually developed over 1,300 onshore wind ranches in the last 20 years and is a leading international wind turbine manufacturer.”
The wind power tasks belonged to Colombia’s simply power change, intending to change nonrenewable fuel sources with renewables while sustaining at risk teams like Native individuals. The area is home to Cerrejon, among the biggest open-pit coal mines on the planet and a significant gamer in Latin America’s mining field, which has actually functioned given that 1985. The mine has simply 9 years left in its lifetime, and its closure, without alternate strategies in position, will certainly deal a substantial impact to the area’s economic situation.
For Samuel Lanao, head of La Guajira’s ecological authority, the primary factor numerous qualified renewable resource tasks are being liquidated is due to the fact that firms have problem with ingrained social stress, specifically throughout the previous examination procedure with regional Native areas. Lanao claimed battles have actually arised in between companies and homeowners, hindering assumptions of growth.
” This has actually been a significant impact to La Guajira,” he claimed, “as there were high expect financial and social progression with these tasks.”
The Wayuu people, a seminomadic Native team in the dry La Guajira area of north Colombia and Venezuela, stay separated over wind power growth. While some have actually invited the financial assistance supplied by firms constructing generators on their genealogical lands, several others have actually increased worries over ecological and social effects, and an absence of significant previous examination, in what is among Colombia’s poorest areas.
Diego Client, supervisor of the Jemeiwaa Ka’I wind job, a large wind ranch collection in La Guajira, recognized the introducing nature of Colombia’s very early wind initiatives, which started in a governing vacuum cleaner without clear institutional structures.
” These fundamental tasks dealt with a high institutional and territorial understanding contour, causing the loss of essential calculated tasks,” Client claimed. “Nonetheless, their tradition currently creates the keystone for brand-new efforts.”
Client thinks that obstacles around legit Wayuu neighborhood depiction, ecological allowing, and agreement resolutions have actually relapsed, developing even more steady problems.”
Client claimed false information strengthened stress and unjustly broken companies like EDP that, he states, intended to sustain areas.
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