In the municipality of Argelia, Cauca, several families that live far from the municipal capital and do not have electricity grids have used dynamos, a type of generator, to produce energy. “But not everyone has enough money to install dynamos,” explains the mayor, Johnatan Patiño.

In addition, when there are problems with the generators, it is necessary to make long trips from the villages to the headwaters and then to Popayán. “There are families that live 10 hours away from the road,” says Patiño.

Argelia is a Pdet (Programas de Desarrollo con Enfoque Territorial) municipality, prioritized for the implementation of the Agreement and sadly known for massacres like the one yesterday. A key hope for the future is that solar panels will facilitate the living conditions of rural and isolated farming families,

Mayor Patiño told La Silla that in September a project was signed to install panels for 246 families living in isolated villages; it is led by the Government and the Mayor’s Office, and its cost of a little more than five billion comes from royalties to implement the Agreement, through the so-called OcadPaz.

This is just one example of how panels are becoming a solution for people living in remote areas, and of Pdet’s bets for that, such as those of Puerto Rico, Caquetá, or Nariño.

However, although solar energy is becoming a solution for more people to have electricity, it, plus other non-conventional renewable energies such as wind (with wind), and the one made using organic matter (biomass), usually by burning it, add up to less than 1 percent of the energy consumed in the country.

The rest is divided between hydroelectric plants (69 %) and thermal power plants (30 %), which depend on hydrocarbons such as coal or gas.

Despite the fact that thermal power produces 9.7 percent of atmospheric gas emissions, the largest contributor in the energy industry, there is no date for it to cease to exist in Colombia while renewables are gaining ground.

Colombia is not a country that is considered “dirty” in energy terms. The power of the water-driven turbines produces most of the electricity consumed in the country.

But we must not forget that hydroelectric plants have a high social and environmental impact: reduction of river flow, forest degradation and negative effects on communities, as we report here. This is the type of situation brought about by the construction of Hidroituango for the Cauca River and the people who inhabit it, or the effect on ecosystems such as the dry forest in the Quimbo dam.

For this reason and because it is already old, it is an energy that is considered renewable but conventional, and does not fall into the non-conventional group with wind, solar or biomass. Energies that little by little are opening space among the people.

It is an opportunity to connect regions such as the Amazon and Orinoquia. As energy demand is low enough to carry a cable from the Interconnected System, solar energy is a cheaper option.

These are the type of projects led by Dario Mayorga, manager of Corporación de Energía y Medio Ambiente (Corpoema), a consulting and research company in the field.

It currently has contracts for auditing projects administered by the Ministry of Mines and Energy for non-interconnected areas. “We put in two solar panels with batteries,” Mayorga says. One of these projects is in Vaupés, which reaches 1,200 users in 52 communities and was completed on October 9.

Solar energy the country has indeed improved: if in 2018 there were two farms, today there are eight that can generate 166 megawatts and add investments for 580 billion pesos, said the Deputy Minister of Mines and Energy, Miguel Lotero.

For sizing, if the energy from these farms went directly to people, it could be used by about 1,100 families in a month, assuming that each family consumes on average 0.152 megawatts.

In addition, in 2019 the government held three renewable energy auctions. Although the first failed, as we tell in this story, the second was successful.

It offered to pay the so-called reliability charge, which seeks to ensure the long-term supply of energy. Of the total 4,010 megawatts allocated with firm power obligations (that which has to be available when required), 1,160 are from wind projects and 238 from solar.

That means there should be 1,398 megawatts of non-conventional energy ready to operate in 2022 and 2023.

The third auction was held in October, specifically for these energies. It was won by eight projects, five wind and three solar, which have secured 15-year energy sales contracts, starting from the beginning of their operation in 2022.

With them, the government expects to install about 2,200 megawatts, 12 percent of the country’s energy matrix, in non-conventional energy.

For the World Energy Council, a forum of countries that promotes the use and application of renewable energies, this is “an improvement” compared to the current low participation of non-conventional energies in the national electricity matrix.

Recently, Duque announced that there will be another auction in 2021.

These mechanisms open the way for new clean energy auctions for renewables to be promoted at the private level. Such as the auction of the trading company Renovatio or those of the new coastal operator Air-e, which were launched a few weeks ago and are aimed at buying energy from renewable projects to be marketed nationwide.

The idea is that they will buy only this type of energy, and then sell it to those who distribute it, such as Codensa, the Meta or Santander electricity companies, or Enerpereira.

For Maria Fernanda Suárez, until recently Minister of Mines and Energy, the fact that the country will increase, in three years, its share of renewables in the energy matrix to more than 10 percent represents a rapid transition.

But he told La Silla that this will depend on whether they can be built and connected to the backbone of the country’s power grid, the National Transmission System.

“It will be a demonstration effect that will drive electric generators to put in more wind and solar plants,” Suarez explained.

Coal and gas thermoelectric power plants, as explained to La Silla Vacía by Giovanni Pavón, a developer of renewable energy projects, “are considered as backup energy”.

It means that they are there in case there is a problem that prevents the other sources from producing enough energy, such as when there is an El Niño Phenomenon and water levels drop. For this reason, thermal power plants serve as an insurance to avoid blackouts and rationing like those of 1992.

And since renewable energies also depend on atmospheric conditions such as the amount of sunlight or that one day it is windy and the next it is not, the government prefers to maintain these hydrocarbon plants.

That is why the Ministry of Mines and Energy continues to bet on it. Such as the auction of reliability charges we mentioned before to have that insurance financed, paying the owners of the power plants to have them ready to turn them on when needed.

With that auction, which was held in February 2019, 11 thermal power plants are expected to be ready in 2022, some new and others that already exist but with more capacity. In total, the Ministry plans to have 37 by 2030, which shows that the bet on thermal power plants as insurance is maintained.

This worries Pabón, as he believes that the government should limit coal- or gas-fired power plants and put an end to this source in time. “Until when are we going to have generation from fossil sources? This is not a simple thing to solve, but the government has to be in this discussion”, he pointed out.

A source at the Ministry told us off-microphone that although there is no date, policy signals are being given on renewable energies. And that is why in the last auction of the reliability charge they awarded solar and wind energy projects.

Another aspect that also worries experts such as Maria Alejandra González, business officer for climate change mitigation at the NGO WWF, is that when energy demand increases, for example, when the transport sector is electrified, the challenge is that the energy source should be renewable and clean.

The Government is aiming for at least 600,000 electric vehicles by 2030, when as of March 2019 there were 5,425 electric vehicles out of the 14,671,694 in the vehicle fleet, according to figures from the Registro Único Nacional de Tránsito (Runt). González is clear that “there must be coherence” and that in order to supply this electricity demand, it cannot be with energy that comes from coal-fired plants.

Former minister Suárez understands this challenge, and clarified that part of the commitment to renewables is to ensure that the energy for this demand comes from them. But he believes it will depend on its cost being reasonable and competitive, something that still has difficulties.

Solar panels and wind turbines have come down in price over the last decade and are becoming increasingly attractive to the market.

When Eduardo Ospina finished his studies in electrical and electronic engineering at the Universidad Nacional, he was inspired by renewable energies in Europe. There, this sector is growing, and windmills and solar panels are increasingly taking over their landscapes, while coal is being forgotten.

Together with other colleagues, in 2017 he created Solenium, a solar energy startup to “democratize and facilitate clean energy for people and businesses.” It refers to bringing energy to communities in hard-to-reach areas and enabling people to be both consumers and producers of energy.

In pursuit of solar energy efficiency, Solenium patented a mechanism that allows its panels to follow the sun’s trajectory. In addition, they designed an algorithm to clean themselves automatically.

This system is already on the market and is, for example, at the Liceo de Cervantes high school in Barranquilla, where it serves as a laboratory for students to research solar energy systems.

However, lack of knowledge persists and makes people shy to bet on solar panels. “You have to educate little by little,” says Ospina.

He believes that it will be essential for people to lose their fear of taking risks with this technology in order for it to become widespread in the country.

But one of the challenges of solar panels, to think about using it as a backup power, is storage. The cost of batteries remains high.

Dario Mayorga, from Corpoema, explained to La Silla that it is key that these prices come down. If that does not happen, “conventional thermal sources will continue to operate to supply the needs”.

Hydrogen, a fuel that can replace fossil fuels and that will surely be revolutionary, is going through a similar scenario: the cost of the technology to harness hydrogen in a clean way is still high, so it will take time for it to be lower and become widespread.

The Ministry source told us that Colombia is making alliances with countries such as Germany to import this technology when it reduces its production cost, something that should happen in the next few years, and President Duque said he would ally with Chile to make a roadmap by the end of the first quarter 2021, for the “development of green hydrogen in Colombia”.

Maria Alejandra Gonzalez of WWF knows that these technologies are long-term bets, so she insists that the government send a political signal to promote research and development.

He gives the example that the United Kingdom will ban the sale of cars that use fossil fuels by 2030. “He probably doesn’t have the step-by-step of what it will look like figured out, but he’ll have to do it,” Gonzalez says. “When that happens, the country also gives investors a sense of security.”

In the meantime, although the transition to renewable energies has already begun, the next few years will be accompanied by coal. A decade that is marked by Colombia’s commitments to the planet to reduce its emissions and limit the increase in global temperature. Surely, the country’s ambition towards renewables will be a factor to be taken into account.