VENEZUELA: Despite Abundant Oil, Hydropower Use Is Growing

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Márquez

CIUDAD GUAYANA, Venezuela, Sep 20 2005 (IPS) - Although Venezuela is one of the world’s leading oil producers, it reaffirmed its emphasis on hydroelectricity – a cleaner form of energy – on Tuesday, when the 50th turbine in the Guri hydropower complex began to operate.

Venezuelan authorities also announced that measures would be taken to curb the environmental damages caused by small-scale gold and diamond miners in the Caroní River, which feeds the Guri complex, located 600 km southeast of Caracas.

The hydroelectric complex in southeastern Venezuela is one of the world’s largest, along with the Brazilian-Paraguayan Itaipú complex, which has a capacity to generate 12,600 megawatts of hydropower. The biggest will be the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in China, whose planned generating capacity will be 22,000 megawatts.

In today’s world, where 1.5 billion people have no access to electric power, total hydroelectric generation stands at 600,000 megawatts.

The Guri complex – which is made up of several dams, as well as the 4,000 sq km Guri Lake formed by the flooding – began to be built 42 years ago. It has an installed generating capacity of 12,500 megawatt hours, which will climb to 17,670 over the next decade.

The complex, whose dams were built on the Caroní River, between 10 and 110 km before it flows into the giant Orinoco River near Ciudad Guayana, “will generate the same amount of electricity that would require 750,000 barrels a day of oil to produce in a thermal power plant,” Daniel Machado, president of the state-run Caroní Electrification (EDELCA) company, told IPS.

Venezuela, the world’s fifth largest oil exporter, with a population of 26 million, consumes 12,000 megawatts of electricity, 70 percent of which comes from the Guri complex.

The country’s total generating capacity of nearly 18,000 megawatts, plus the continuous installation of new turbines in the Guri complex dams on the Caroní River – one every 20 months – place Venezuela in a comfortable position in terms of energy supplies.

The country even exports some 200 megawatt hours to Brazil, and a similar amount to Colombia on occasions.

But the main distributor of electricity, the state-owned CADAFE, loses approximately 40 percent of the electric power it receives from the generators, which represents some 500 million dollars in losses annually due to causes ranging from the use of antiquated power grids to the theft of electricity by consumers.

Also facing problems is Plantacentro, a state-run thermal plant with a nominal capacity of 2,000 megawatt hours in Morón, 150 km northwest of Caracas. Several of the plant’s units are damaged, and it is operating at 20 percent of its potential.

Although EDELCA boasts of its efficiency, Machado admits that it is only able to collect payments from “60 percent of the customers.”

“We have slow payers and defaulters,” he said.

Several regions in the northeast and northwest suffer blackouts, “while national demand is growing – by seven percent in 2004 and 8.5 percent so far this year – and that growth is far outstripping the projections and plans that put EDELCA in charge of covering 60 percent of total consumption,” the company’s production manager, Arturo Godoy, commented to IPS.

EDELCA is investing in the modernisation of the Guri complex at a cost of 480 million dollars, and the construction of the Tocoma dam, the fourth to be built on the Caroní River.

Tocoma, which is to be completed in 2012, will add 2,250 megawatts to the complex. Construction will cost around three billion dollars, 750 million of which will come from the Inter-American Development Bank and 600 million from the Andean Development Corporation.

“These are installations made to operate for 100 years,” said operations chief Luis León.

Once the dams on the lower Caroní River are completed, projects to harness the upper part of the river – which has a potential of 5,000 megawatt hours – can begin, and smaller dams can start to be built on several of the river’s tributaries.

The Caroní River is ideal for producing hydroelectricity, because it runs downhill at great speed on a rocky riverbed, with an average flow of 5,000 cubic metres per second.

Rainfall is high in the 92,000 sq km river basin, averaging 2,900 mm a year, but reaching up to 6,000 mm a year in some areas. A full 67 percent of the basin is covered with forests, and nearly 86 percent consists of protected areas.

“We have suffered environmental damages, caused by illegal incursions by miners and loggers, who have hurt the headwaters of some tributaries, and have produced sedimentation that reduces the availability of water needed in the Guri Lake,” said Machado.

Godoy, however, said that “although for three years there was a bit of drought, and the level of water in the Guri Lake (one of the largest man-made lakes in the world) dropped a few metres, the availability of water has been sufficient since 2004, and we have even had to ease the pressure on the dams.”

“There is no crisis,” he declared.

The government, nevertheless, “has launched a plan to gradually eradicate mining in the entire Caroní basin,” Deputy Minister of the Environment Nora Delgado told IPS.

The plan forms part of a broader mining and forestry management initiative in southeastern Venezuela.

Julio Centeno, a professor of forestry sciences at the University of Los Andes, pointed out to IPS that “studies carried out in the past 20 years have found that, as a result of mining activity, which leads to deforestation and sedimentation, the Caroní River is at risk, and along with it Venezuela’s electricity supplies.”

In the nearby basin of the Cuyuní River, which runs towards the neighbouring country of Guyana, hundreds of miners have been throwing up roadblocks to protest concessions of gold mines to Crystallex International Corp., a Canadian mining company.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez announced Monday that he would review the mining concessions, but did not provide further details.

He also said his government would create a state-run company that will enter into a partnership with small-scale gold and diamond miners in that region.

The president warned, however, that “If we have to choose between gold and diamonds on one hand and water and forests on the other, we will decide in favour of the environment.”

With respect to the energy outlook in Venezuela, Machado was optimistic: “In Venezuela we have problems of distribution, but we do not have problems of generation or transmission.”

He also noted that EDELCA will begin to produce thermal power in two plants to be built in the northeast and the northwest, which will add 1,000 megawatt hours to the grid.