“Chilean green hydrogen can serve the world for the transition,” Chilean Energy Minister tells RFI

First modification: 11/17/2022 – 11:27

At the COP27 climate conference in Egypt, Gabriel Boric’s ministers came up with ambitious goals in favor of the energy transition. In 2040, the South American country aspires to be one of the three main exporters of green hydrogen, a transportable fuel that is produced from renewable energies. In addition, Chile plans to sell 100% electric cars in 2035 and achieve CO2 emissions neutrality in 2050. The Chilean Minister of Energy, Diego Pardow, spoke about this with RFI in the Chilean pavilion at the COP27 climate conference in Sharm El Sheikh. .

RFI: Chile aspires to be one of the world’s leading exporters of green hydrogen thanks to its solar power generation potential. But the production of this type of ecological fuel is still very expensive. And transporting it will also be very expensive, due to its danger. How can you make your production cheaper?

Diego Pardo: Indeed, the international demand for green hydrogen has not yet occurred. For it to occur, it is necessary for the industrialized countries to maintain their calendars to implement the corrective instruments that make the costs of fossil fuels internalize. Using fossil fuels is like cheating: you release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and you don’t bear the cost of it.

Once we have these corrective instruments in place to not release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere for free, green hydrogen is going to be competitive in terms of surface costs with fossil fuels. That actually hasn’t happened yet. But more than talking about an export industry, which is part of our national strategy, it is interesting to think of the green hydrogen industry as a way to transition from an economy centered on fossil fuels towards a more sustainable economy. We see green hydrogen as a way to replace the old oil operation that Magallanes had and also replace the coal generation operation in the north of the country to feed the mining industry.

RFI: Chile proposed to be carbon neutral by 2050: how will you achieve this ambitious goal? To do this, Chile will have to reduce its dependence on coal, a fossil energy that emits large amounts of CO2.

Diego Pardo: There are two things. One is the commitment to carbon neutrality. Another is the commitment to gradually close plants that use coal. In the case of coal-fired power plants, what we need is to replace not only the number of megabytes generated but also the characteristics of these power plants: in addition to providing electricity, they provide flexibility for demand peaks. We already have a large number of wind and photovoltaic generation. One third of our generation capacity comes from wind and sun, but the wind varies during the year and the sun is only there during the day. They are not able to provide you with that flexibility that we need. We need to address that from a technology perspective.

RFI: Global demand for lithium for electric car batteries is growing. Chile has large reserves that it will exploit. But this mining activity is contradictory to President Boric’s will to limit the excessive extractivism that depletes water reserves.

Diego Pardo: There are different technologies to exploit lithium. Some of them consume a lot of water, others consume less. But Both lithium and copper and green hydrogen will serve the rest of the planet to carry out its energy transition. We are willing to collaborate in this regard. But from a strictly national perspective, we see in this industry a way to migrate towards more complex and more sustainable industries than the ones we currently have. There are economic communities that depend on coal, if you take them out of circulation, you have to put something in their place to take over the jobs that pay the middle class. Green hydrogen is just that. The idea is to produce it with renewable, solar or wind energy.

RFI: Here at COP27 there is a sector of NGOs and States – three at the moment – ​​that are promoting a draft treaty on the non-proliferation of fossil fuels. Does Chile join the idea?

Diego Pardo: Chile today we decided to become a member of the coalition “Beyond gas and oil” (VOGUE for its acronym in English) to gradually reduce the number of explorations that will increase the production capacity of fossil fuels. Chile is not a producer of fossil fuels. We are net importers. Our contribution is rather to show what is after gas and oil. What there is is an important technological challenge to replicate this flexibility of producing when you want that oil gives, and in the case of transportation, the electrification of cars plays a part, especially in cities. But for long-distance transportation, batteries are not the solution, so we need to find other things like synthetic fuels, green ammonia, those are the kinds of things that we’re exploring.