Germany bets on Colombia on the road to energy transition

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – On June 23 and 24, the most diverse governmental agents and companies from Colombia and Germany will meet in Bogota to strengthen their cooperation as economies seeking to lay the foundations for the widespread use of renewable energy sources.

Berlin and Bogota complement each other. Their governments, that of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, that of outgoing Colombian President Iván Duque, and that of incoming President Gustavo Petro, share the same mission: to achieve the energy transition sooner rather than later.

“Colombia has one of the cleanest energy matrixes on the planet, with huge hydroelectric plants that represent 70% of the energy matrix,” said Juan Ricardo Ortega, president of Grupo Energía Bogotá (Energy Group Bogota – GEB), which manages and invests in transmission, transport and distribution systems for electricity and gas in several Latin American countries, in a conversation with DW.

THE RENEWABLE ENERGY BOOM IN COLOMBIA

The economist highlights that “President Iván Duque made a very important bet by exploiting the enormous wind and solar potential, which has the possibility of doubling its generation infrastructure on the Caribbean coast and in some inland areas, where the level of radiation is very high”.

According to the GEB president, the potential for renewable energy production in Colombia “opens a space to become one of the sources of supply of green ammonia to Europe”.

Ammonia is a derivative of methane gas that is used in the production of fertilizers in agriculture. Ortega explains that “ammonia is easier to transport than hydrogen, so he estimates that by 2027 Colombia could already be exporting ammonia, rather than hydrogen.”

“Thanks to one of the most promising normative, regulatory and fiscal frameworks in the region, today Colombia’s energy transition is a fact,” says the Colombian Ministry of Mines and Energy.

According to the same entity, “Colombia went from having only two wind and solar projects in the last four years to 21 solar farms, two wind farms, ten large-scale self-generation projects, and more than 3,000 small-scale solar photovoltaic self-generation projects,” it adds.

RENEWABLE ENERGY TRAINING

“Colombia has almost multiplied by 100 the installed capacity of non-conventional renewable sources that existed in 2018,” Thorsten Kötschau, president of the Colombian-German Chamber of Industry and Commerce, tells DW.

Thus, the only South American country with two coasts, the Andes, and Amazon has managed to position itself as an energy benchmark in the region. But it has to increase its technical capacity and workforce for the new renewable energy projects that Gustavo Petro’s government also intends to develop as of August 7.

Consequently, “we as the German-Colombian Chamber of Industry and Commerce (AHK Colombia), together with the German Energy Agency (Dena), the Embassies of Germany in Colombia and Colombia in Germany, as well as the Government of Iván Duque, have worked on the creation of a Regional Training Center for Renewable Energies”, reveals Thorsten Kötschau.

Training in renewable energies is an “enormous” contribution, praises the president of the GEB.

According to Kötschau, this training and innovation center will be designed “to train Colombians and other Latin Americans in renewable energy techniques. A dual training that seeks to be homologated to degrees in Germany “to offer graduates the opportunity to increase their experience also in Germany, where the energy sector employs about 300,000 people,” explains the president of the AHK Colombia.

And he concludes that “we would like to bring more added value to production in Colombia” because “this way more jobs are created, which translates into economic growth”.

With information from DW