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# Ecuadors Renewable Energy Carlos Zorrilla

Ecuador is one of those Ring-of-Fire countries with enormous geothermal energy producingpotential. It has one of the highest per-capita water allotments in the world and, being amountainous and relatively rainy place, it is home one of the highest concentrations of rivers persquare kilometers on the planet, making the countrys hydraulic potential vast (estimated at 22,000Megawatts 1). Though not nearly as sunny as southern Peru or most of Chile, the count rys Aeolicpotential, estimated 900 Megawatts, would help it free itself from its dependence on petroleum toproduce electricity. Helped by the nations year -around growing season, biomass is anotherpotential source of renewable energy underused. Add to the renewable resources menu its 2,400kilometers of coast line facing the not-so-tranquil Pacific Ocean where untold megawatts of waveand tidal power could be harnessed along with exceptional windy places to harvest Aeolic energy,and you have the making of a renewable-energy powerhouse. Incredibly, however, to date, thecountry gets 95% of its overall energy needs from fossil fuels 1 (Ecuador exports petroleum, butimports gas). Even more incredibly, in light of all the renewable alternatives, is the $ 3.8 billion insubsidies the government spends every year just to subsidize fossil fuels to power its economy 2.

When it comes to generating electricity, the panorama is not so dire and, in fact, it is vastlyimproving. Right now, hydraulic power generates 5 8% of the countrys electricity; a respectable sum.However, aside from the 1% it gets from biomass, the rest, 41%, come from the burning of fossilfuels 3. The country has big plans to change things around, however, and by 2016 it plans to get95.53% of its electricity from dams, 0.32% from biomass, 0.57% from wind, 0.72% from geothermaland only 4.86% from the burning of fossil fuels 3. To that end, the present government has embarkedon massive dam building project, and is simultaneously building eight large and mediumhydroelectric projects to not only replace the burning of petroleum with cleaner energy, but alsoexport it to neighboring countries.

Its been a very long time since large dams were seen as the best solution to solve the worlds energyscarcity, especially in biologically diverse places like Ecuador. Flooding forests, not only releases hugeamount of methane, a greenhouse gas roughly 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, but it canalso impact peoples access to sustainable sources of f ood, severely affect cultures as well as speciesfacing extinction, and uproot whole communities. Large dams can also be a cause of healthproblems: in a country that only treats about 8% of its residual water, this could be problematic, tosay the least. For example, in its rush to change the energy matrix of the country, Ecuador isdamming up the Guayllabamba River in several places. The Guayllabamba is a little more than anopen sewer that drains Quitos wastewater. Things could be done better: at the sa me time thegovernment is building large dams in the Intag region, several micro and small communityhydroelectric projects were rejected. These smaller projects dont require the damming up of rivers,thus substantially reducing the ecological footprint per megawatt.

There is no doubt that replacing the burning of petroleum with hydroelectricity is beneficial for theplanet, and saves money for the country. However, one must ask if the benefits are worth it if, as inthe case of Ecuador, the country wants to direct a good part of that clean energy to powerenvironmentally destructive activities, such as large-scale mining, copper smelting, steel production,and to bring to life to a massive petrochemical plant.

How to explain such incoherence and, until recently, monumental waste of a non-renewableresource in a land brimming with renewable sources of energies? I attribute it to just one of the well-known effects of the Natural Resource Curse that affects countries rich in natural resources. Therelative overabundance of a certain resource, in this case petroleum, tends to make politicians andother decision makers blind to develop other alternatives to drive their economies. If there is plentyof petroleum, the logic goes, why not center the economy on it and burn it to drive development.

This short-term mentality not only shortchanges sustainability but is what has brought mankind tothe brink of a global ecological collapse. If that mentality doesn't change, changing the source ofenergy will not be enough to effect the kind and depth of change humanity needs to avert theenvironmental catastrophe that is looming ever closer in the horizon.

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Sources 1. http://www.buenvivir.gob.ec/2. http://www.andes.info.ec/es/economia/2015-focalizara-subsidio-gasolina-ecuador.html-0 3. Ministerio Coordinador de sectores Estratgicos. Catlogo de inversin para proyectos estratgicos 2014-2017 4. Senagua, DHCP. 2013. Gestin de recursos hdricos en el ecuador *Retrieved 27 August 2013

Additional Sources2020. OLADE.Observatorio de Energas Renovables en Amrica Latina y el Caribe: ECUADOR Informe FinalProducto 1: Lnea Base de las Tecnologas Energticas Producto 2: Estado del Arte

http://www.buenvivir.gob.ec/http://www.buenvivir.gob.ec/http://www.andes.info.ec/es/economia/2015-focalizara-subsidio-gasolina-ecuador.html-0http://www.andes.info.ec/es/economia/2015-focalizara-subsidio-gasolina-ecuador.html-0http://www.andes.info.ec/es/economia/2015-focalizara-subsidio-gasolina-ecuador.html-0http://www.andes.info.ec/es/economia/2015-focalizara-subsidio-gasolina-ecuador.html-0http://www.andes.info.ec/es/economia/2015-focalizara-subsidio-gasolina-ecuador.html-0http://www.buenvivir.gob.ec/