In a letter sent to El Mercurio on June 26, the new executive vice president of HidroAysén (HA), Daniel Fernández, lists the project’s advantages, especially its cost, as Chile deals with its future energy needs. But he has arrived late to this debate. There is no doubt that petroleum is now outdated and it is time to innovate. We have been saying this repeatedly for years.

We have also highlighted the example of Norway, which has the world’s greatest annual per capita consumption of electricity, more than 25,000 kilowatt-hours per inhabitant (in Chile, it is just 2,500). In Norway, 99 percent of the power is generated by about 700 energy plants, with more than 80 percent of them “run of the river” power generators. More importantly, Norway has prohibited the construction of dams since the beginning of this century.

So, large dams for producing electricity are also outdated. It is an obsolete technology because of its negative impact on the environment. In Chile, 55 percent of our power is generated by dams. Which is to say that Fernández is trying to sell us more of the same old stuff and is trying to mislead the public.

It is a very different thing to have 100 “run of the river” hydropower generators each producing 27 megawatts, as opposed to several dams that produce 2,700 megawatts of power. The benefits of “run of the river” generators are legion:  they make use of a river’s natural slope; they cause minimal damage to the environment; they provide much greater energy security (because multiple energy sources are delivering power to many different energy consumption points and thus thwart the kind of energy blackouts that we saw last March); they create good paying, professional jobs at the local level; they work against the creation of economic monopolies; the technological and financial issues can be dealt with immediately; and only small legal modifications are necessary to help create this kind of power source throughout our country.

Big dam projects are not cheaper because they do not take into account the environmental costs that come with them, costs that every Chilean must pay. We do not have taxes in Chile for the use of water, and there is no official way to calculate the environmental costs of big dams.

And the cost of big dams – in terms of their impact on greenhouse gases – is not so innocuous.  The forests that are inundated by the big dams will stop capturing carbon dioxide, the most important of the greenhouse gases. And the rotting of the forests will liberate tremendous amounts of methane gas, a gas that is 30 times more noxious than greenhouse gases. The nutrients that are trapped by the dams will impact the growth of plankton. The plankton that is found at Tortel, where the Baker and Pascua rivers flow into the ocean, captures an estimated 120 million tons of carbon dioxide as a result of its biological activity.

Big dams not only emit greenhouse gases, they also impede the capture of carbon dioxide. The carbon cycle is a balance between emissions and capture of these gases. Our country still has a positive balance because of its 14 million hectares of native forests, its 2 million hectares of forest farms (pine and eucalyptus), and its seawaters rich with plankton. The proposed dams will stop the flow of nutrients that are indispensible for the growth of plankton. 

Fernández makes absolutely no mention of all these things when he speaks to the media. Maybe he just does not know, although we have pointed out these issues to him before.

The argument about the competitive cost of the energy created by HidroAysén is false. In 2005, dam proponents said the project would cost US$4 billion. But now they say it will cost US$7 billion, when the transmission line is included (the line will be the largest in the world: some 1,360 miles, 6,200 towers that are 70 meters tall). So what will the final, real cost be?

It is also false to take the growing energy demand in a single given month – May 2010 – and suggest that this is the long-term tendency. This is especially so when the country is just now recovering from the earthquake, with energy consumption down and not even reaching levels seen two years ago.

Does Fernández really relieve that consumption will grow by 50 percent in the next 10 months? If he really believes that, then he is not qualified to lead the project. And if he does not believe it, then he is twisting reality and working on the assumption that the public he pretends to lead is ignorant or incapable of understanding what it really going on.

Daniel Fernández is committing the same mistakes that HidroAysén has made from the beginning: completely disregarding the strength of our public services and an informed citizenry in their effort to protect the environment. HidroAysén’s Environmental Impact Statement and the additional documentation provided by the company lack essential information.  As a result, it received 3,000 questions when first presented and then an additional 1,500 when it was submitted a second time.

Fernández also fails to mention – in his public statements – the financial implications the project has for its owners. If constructed, the project will deliver about 19,000 gigawatt-hours to the nation’s central power grid. Given the current base price rate, this will create income of about US$1.2 billion, with generation costs of about US$600 million.

This is, truly, a great, monopolistic business!

The project’s cost is the most important argument Daniel Fernández uses to justify HidroAysén. “Cost” was also the most important argument Fernández used when he led TVN (the national TV station) to justify selling off transmission rights to the World Cup matches, with the results that about 80 percent of our nation was unable to see the soccer games they had hoped to view.

One-sided points of view that take only financial matters into consideration lead to tremendous errors. The same errors that Fernández is making by leading a project that reinforces the monopolistic generation of electricity in our country and gives nothing back. Our country has many, many other sources for generating electricity.

Those of us who are so enthusiastically pushing for renewable energy have strong arguments, and we can provide alternative ways to satisfy our nation’s needs. Not just its energy needs, but its need to give priority to its natural beauty, the natural beauty that is found in Chile’s Patagonia. It is difficult to put a price on this kind of need, but it is a need that is shared by 50 percent of our people – the Chileans who have declared themselves opposed to the dam project in numerous polls.

(Ed. Note:  See related business story in today’s ST.)


Translated by Steve Anderson ( \n editor@santiagotimes.cl This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )