/RPT/ENVIRONMENT-ARGENTINA: Sun and Wind Race for Slice of Market

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 24 1998 (IPS) - Solar and wind energy are racing for a share of Argentina’s electricity market. But while the former is still expensive with respect to conventional sources, wind power is getting cheaper and will be regulated by its own law as of next month.

In an interview with IPS, Juan Carlos Villalonga with Greenpeace Argentina said the Southern Cone country had “enormous latent potential” in terms of wind power. “The technology is already ripe for competing with nuclear, thermic or hydrolectric energy.”

But most Argentinians are unfamiliar with wind power, which accounts for a mere 0.06 percent of all energy consumed in Argentina.

The exception is Patagonia in southern Argentina, where winds blow strong, and cooperatives supply a number of towns and cities with electricity obtained from wind power. A full 13 percent of consumption in Comodoro Rivadavia, in the province of Chubut, is met by South America’s largest wind power park, located in the area.

“Generation of wind power in Argentina rose threefold in 1997, and the technology has the potential of satisfying 30 percent of the country’s energy demand,” said Villalonga.

Wind power will receive a major boost next month when Congress ratifies a “wind law” designed to promote its use. Not only will the new law provide a secure legal framework for investment, it will also subsidise electric companies that use wind as a source of energy.

Villalonga underlined that at a global level wind power had expanded at an annual rate of 20 percent this decade, a boom comparable only to the growth of Internet or cellular phones. “It is increasingly used not only in the United States, Japan and Denmark but also in poor countries like India and China.”

The use of solar energy is also growing in Argentina, although it is lagging behind wind power.

Engineer Aldo Fabri, the Secretariat of Energy’s Coordinator of Research and Development, told IPS that his department was involved in a project aimed at providing solar energy to 1.4 million rural inhabitants throughout the country.

The first stage of the programme will be financed with a 45 million dollar World Bank loan and a 13 million dollar subsidy from the Global Environment Fund (GEF).

“Our main objective is social,” said Fabri. “We want to make a clean and cheap technology available to people who now use candles and kerosene lanterns to light their homes.” He added that solar panels had begun to be installed in some areas.

The size of the panels of photovoltaic cells varies according to the climate in each province. The Secretariat of Energy does not plan to offer equipment by which each home would obtain its own energy, but will subsidise rates charged by private companies.

Villalonga said Greenpeace took issue with the Secretariat’s approach. First of all, the international environmental watchdog sees wind energy as more competitive than solar, and secondly it views the government’s decision to provide energy obtained from renewable resources as arising from concern over profits rather than any awareness of environmental problems.

“They’re doing it because it would be expensive to provide conventional energy, and because it is not in the companies’ interests to do so,” he said.

The environmentalist also noted that energy-related technology “always progresses hand in hand with an active state policy,” rather than due to market forces.

According to Greenpeace, the Secretariat of Energy is not interested in developing solar or wind technology, nor in curbing the development of thermic power plants which supply markets concentrated in the cities.

Villalonga was also sceptical over the success of a programme based on a service that would cost 10 to 15 dollars a month, even with the 50 percent subsidy. “Rural inhabitants can’t afford that,” he argued. “It would be better if they were provided with the equipment to be paid for in installments, giving them access to energy without need of the companies.”

Still, he said the cost of solar energy, barely used today in Argentina, could drop in the future, making it as competitive as wind power.

A report by the U.S.-based Worldwatch Institute pointed out that although solar energy was not yet competitive, the cost of solar panels could continue to fall.

In Argentina, solar energy already provides light to a number of rural schools in the northwest and its use has begun to expand in the province of Buenos Aires, the most populous province in this country of 35 million.