Latin America renewables boom not just a China story
The story of renewable energy’s rapid rise in Latin America often focuses on Chinese influence, and for good reason.
China’s government, banks and companies have propelled the continent’s energy transition, with about 90% of all wind and solar technologies installed there produced by Chinese companies. China’s State Grid now controls over half of Chile’s regulated energy distribution, enough to raise concerns in the Chilean government.
China has also become a major investor in Latin America’s critical minerals sector, a treasure trove of lithium, nickel, cobalt and rare earth elements that are crucial for developing electric vehicles, wind turbines and defense technologies.
In 2018, the Chinese company Tianqi Lithium purchased a 23% share in one of Chile’s largest lithium producers, Sociedad Química y Minera. More recently, in 2022, Ganfeng Lithium bought a major evaporative lithium project in Argentina for US$962 million.
In April 2023, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed around 20 agreements to strengthen their countries’ already close relationship, including in the areas of trade, climate change and the energy transition.
China’s growing influence over global clean energy supply chains and its leverage over countries’ energy systems have raised international concerns. But the relationship between China and Latin America is also increasingly complicated as Latin American countries try to secure their resources and their own clean energy futures.
Alongside international investments, Latin American countries are fostering energy innovation cultures that are homegrown, dynamic, creative, often grassroots and frequently overlooked. These range from sophisticated innovations with high-tech materials to a phenomenon known as “frugal innovation.”
Chile looks to the future
Chile is an example of how Latin America is embracing renewable energy while trying to plan a more self-reliant future.
New geothermal, solar and wind power projects – some built with Chinese backing, but not all – have pushed Chile far past its 2025 renewable energy goal. About one-third of the country is now powered by clean energy.
But the big prize, and a large part of China’s interest, lies buried in Chile’s Atacama Desert, home to the world’s largest lithium reserves. Lithium, a silvery-white metal, is essential for producing lithium ion batteries that power most electric vehicles and utility-scale energy storage.
Countries around the world have been scrambling to secure lithium sources, and the Chilean government is determined to keep control over its reserves, currently about one-half of the planet’s known supply .
In April 2023, Chile’s president announced a national lithium strategy to ensure that the state holds partial ownership of some future lithium developments. The move, which has yet to be approved, has drawn complaints that it could slow production.
However, the government aims to increase profits from lithium production while strengthening environmental safeguards and sharing more wealth with the country’s citizens, including local communities impacted by lithium projects.
Latin America has seen its resources sold out from under it before, and Chile doesn’t intend to lose out on its natural value this time.
Learning from foreign investors
Developing its own renewable energy industry has been a priority in Chile for well over a decade, but it’s been a rough road at times.
In 2009, the government began establishing national and international centers of excellence – Centros de Excelencia Internacional – for research in strategic fields such as solar energy, geothermal energy and climate resilience.
It invited and co-financed foreign research institutes, such as Europe’s influential Fraunhofer institute and France’s ENGIELab, to establish branches in Chile and conduct applied research. The latest is a center for the production of lithium using solar energy.
The government expected that the centers would work with local businesses and research centers, transferring knowledge to feed a local innovation ecosystem. However, reality hasn’t yet matched the expectations. The foreign institutions brought their own trained personnel.
And except for the recently established institute for lithium, officials tell us that low financing has been a major problem.
Startup incubator and frugal innovation
While big projects get the headlines, more is going on under the radar.
Chile is home to one of the largest public incubators and seed accelerators in Latin America, StartUp Chile. It has helped several local startups that offer important innovations in food, energy, social media, biotech and other sectors.
Often in South America, this kind of innovation is born and developed in a resource-scarce context and under technological, financial and material constraints. This “frugal innovation” emphasizes sustainability with substantially lower costs.
[embedded content]
For example, the independent Chilean startup Reborn Electric Motors has developed a business converting old diesel bus fleets into fully electric buses. Reborn was founded in 2016 when the national electromobility market in Chile was in its early stages, before China’s BYD ramped up electric bus use in local cities.
Reborn’s retrofitted buses are both technologically advanced and significantly cheaper than their Chinese counterparts. While BYD’s new electric bus costs roughly US$320,000, a retrofitted equivalent from Reborn costs roughly half, around $170,000. The company has also secured funding to develop a prototype for running mining vehicles on green hydrogen.
‘Supercheap’ EV
Bolivia’s “tiny supercheap EV” developed by homegrown startup Industrias Quantum Motors is another example of frugal innovation in the electric vehicles space. The startup aspires to bring electric mobility widely to the Latin American population. It offers the tiniest EV car possible, one that can be plugged into a standard wall socket. The car costs around $6,000 and has a range of approximately 34 miles (55 kilometers) per charge.
Phineal is another promising Chilean company that offers clean energy solutions, focusing on solar energy projects. Its projects include solar systems installation, electromobility technology and technology using blockchain to improve renewable energy management in Latin America. Many of these are highly sophisticated and technologically advanced projects that have found markets overseas, including in Germany.
Looking ahead to green hydrogen
Chile is also diving into another cutting-edge area of clean energy. Using its abundant solar and wind power to produce green hydrogen for export as a fossil fuel replacement has become a government priority.
The government is developing a public-private partnership of an unprecedented scale in Chile for hydrogen production and has committed to cover 30% of an expected $193 million public and private investment, funded in part by its lithium and copper production.
Some questions surround the partnership, including Chile’s lack of experience administering such a large project and concerns about the environmental impact. The government claims Chile’s green energy production could eventually rival its mining industry.
With plentiful hydropower and sunshine, Latin America already meets a quarter of its energy demand with renewables – nearly twice the global average. Chile and its neighbors envision those numbers only rising.
Zdenka Myslikova is a postdoctoral scholar in clean energy innovation at Tufts University and Nathaniel Dolton-Thornton is an assistant researcher in climate policy at Tufts University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Northern cities in China brace for another day of torrid heat
BEIJING: Chinese weather forecasters on Thursday (Jul 6) issued a string of heat advisories across northern parts of the country as temperatures were expected to breach 40 degrees Celsius in some areas, stressing taxed power grids. The torrid heat has gripped China for several weeks, pushing local governments to askContinue Reading
Moderna signs deal in Shanghai with view to developing mRNA medicines
SHANGHAI: Vaccine maker Moderna Inc said on Wednesday (Jul 5) it had signed a memorandum of understanding and a land collaboration agreement to work towards opportunities for it to research, develop and manufacture mRNA medicines in China. “Any medicines produced under this agreement will be exclusively for the Chinese peopleContinue Reading
Heavy monsoon rains return to Pakistan a year after deadly floods
ISLAMABAD: Heavy monsoon rains lashed Pakistan on Wednesday (Jul 5), causing deaths, flooding roads and disrupting lives in areas where residents already were struggling to recover from floods last summer that affected 33 million people and killed 1,739, officials said. At least 18 people have died in weather-related incidents sinceContinue Reading
Walkway victim to file complaint
The family of a woman who lost her left leg after it was caught in a moving walkway at Don Mueang Airport last Thursday will have their lawyer file a complaint with the police.
The 57-year-old victim, whose identity has yet to be made public, fell over on the moving walkway as she went to the gate for her flight to Nakhon Si Thammarat.
Authorities believe the force of the fall dislodged the walkway’s safety cover, resulting in the woman’s leg being caught in the walkway’s internal mechanisms.
The victim’s son, Krit Kittirattana, writing on Facebook on Tuesday, said his mother’s condition was stable. She had been treated at a hospital ICU since the accident.
Mr Krit said his mother is mostly doing well emotionally. She has started to allow visitors and seems more relaxed but is still experiencing bouts of intense fear. Mr Krit said that his mother wakes up in fright during the night.
He said the family had sought a psychotherapist’s advice to treat her.
“We are trying to help her maintain her self-esteem as much as possible so that she does not feel that she has lost her self-worth and can resume her normal life again,” Mr Krit wrote.
He also said the family had authorised their lawyer to file a complaint with the police over the accident and contact investigation officers so they can question his mother directly.
Earlier on July 2, Mr Krit wrote on Facebook that the family wants to know if there are any eyewitness at the scene who could provide details about the incident in court.
Don Muang police superintendent Pol Col Adirek Tongkeamkeaw said on Tuesday that police are examining CCTV footage from the airport.
The airport, meanwhile, is checking on other walkways in the complex to ensure passenger safety.
Can ‘good cop’ Janet Yellen help fix US-China relations?
Getty ImagesUS Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is due to arrive in China as part of high-stakes attempts to rebuild bridges between the world’s two biggest economies.
It is the second visit to Beijing by a senior Washington official in as many months and comes after the countries’ relationship nose-dived this year.
The list of points of contention between the US and China ranges from Taiwan and Ukraine to national security and an ongoing trade dispute.
The visit also comes just days after Beijing said it would curb exports of two key materials used to make computer chips.
Ms Yellen’s recent comments that the two economies can work together could be crucial to the trip, which will include her first talks with China’s new Vice Premier He Lifeng.
Ahead of the visit, the US emphasised the importance for the countries “to responsibly manage our relationship, communicate directly about areas of concern, and work together to address global challenges”.
As part of the ongoing efforts to ease tensions, Ms Yellen also met China’s ambassador to the US Xie Feng on Monday for what was described by both sides as a “frank and productive discussion”.
However, “expectations should be kept low for the Yellen visit,” Wendy Cutler, vice president at US-based think tank the Asia Society Policy Institute, told the BBC. “She is not in a position to repair ties nor respond to Chinese requests to lift export controls or tariffs.”
This latest trip to China comes just weeks after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Beijing, when he met President Xi Jinping and foreign minister Qin Gang.
Mr Blinken was the highest-ranking Washington official to visit the Chinese capital in almost half a decade.
The meetings were seen as a key test of whether the two countries could stop their relationship deteriorating further.
At the end of his trip Mr Blinken said that, although there were still major issues between the US and China, his “hope and expectation is we will have better communications, better engagement going forward.”
However, the next day President Joe Biden referred to Mr Xi as a “dictator”, which triggered protests from Beijing. While analysts said Mr Biden’s comment was unlikely to have a major negative effect, it was also widely seen as not helping matters.
In another sign that the trade dispute between the two countries is far from being resolved, China this week announced it was tightening controls over exports of two materials crucial to producing computer chips. From next month, special licences will be needed to export gallium and germanium from China, which is the world’s biggest producer of the metals.
The move follows Washington’s efforts in the past year to curb Chinese access to some advanced computer chips. In October, Washington announced it would require licences for companies exporting chips to China using US tools or software, no matter where they are made in the world.
The US and China face a complex set of issues, said Priyanka Kishore from the business forum IMA Asia.
“The official rhetoric and visits by senior diplomats indicate a desire to establish a working political relationship between the two countries,” she added. “But the actions suggest otherwise, with the tit-for-tat policies dominating.”
During meetings with her counterparts in Beijing Ms Yellen is expected to make clear that the US will continue to defend human rights and its national security interests.
However, she is also expected to emphasise Washington’s willingness to work with Beijing on issues, including climate change and the problems faced by heavily-indebted countries.
While some high-profile figures have called for the US to completely break economic ties with China, Ms Yellen will take a more placatory approach. She is expected to tell her counterparts in Beijing that Washington does not intend to decouple the two economies.
This is in line with her worldview, which is more globalist than some of her predecessors, as she outlined in a speech earlier this year: “A full separation of our economies would be disastrous for both countries. It would be destabilising for the rest of the world.”
She is also likely to be seen as a “good cop” compared to Mr Blinken, former International Monetary Fund chief economist Ken Rogoff told the BBC.
In his role as secretary of state, Mr Blinken had to raise some hard issues, such as Taiwan and Ukraine, Mr Rogoff said.
However, Mr Rogoff cautioned that this should not be taken as a sign that Ms Yellen will be soft on Beijing as she is likely to press Chinese officials on a number of issues, including intellectual property laws and access to markets.
Also, while some figures on both sides of the US-China divide talk of splitting away from one another, the reality of the interdependence can be seen in trading figures.
Trade between the two countries grew in 2022 for the third year in a row, with official figures showing China exported more than $536bn worth of goods to the US last year, while $154bn of goods went in the other direction.
But even as Washington and Beijing try to resolve their differences, the spectre of the US presidential election looms.
“If there is a second Biden administration beginning after 2024, on the economic front I expect loosening of many of the Trump-era trade sanctions and tariffs, in particular ones less related to high technology sectors,” Professor Eric Harwit of the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii said.
“However, if Donald Trump wins the 2024 election, all bets are off.”
Related Topics
Richie Koh gets fluent in Hokkien for new dialect drama Whatever Will Be, Will Be
Koh, who is Teochew, told CNA Lifestyle in a previous interview that his Hokkien isn’t particularly strong, so he’s had to work hard to make sure he nails all his lines.
We imagine it’s challenging to act in a language that’s not your first, but we’re also sure he gets lots of help from his fellow cast members, especially Hokkien veterans like Richard “Limpeh” Low.
Will Koh’s Hokkien pass muster? Well, whatever will be, will be, so we’ll have to watch to find out.
Catch Whatever Will Be, Will Be starting Jul 21, Fridays at 11.30am on Channel 8.
Suchatvee asked to vie for top Dems’ job
Suchatvee Suwansawat, the Democrat Party’s Bangkok governor candidate, has been asked to stand in the party leadership contest, although he has not decided whether to put his name in the hat, according to a source in the Democrats.
He was wooed to enter the leadership race set for Sunday by members affiliated to Chalermchai Sri-on, former party secretary-general. Mr Suchatvee was approached for the role despite having earlier declined to vie for the top party seat.
Other potential candidates include Watanya Bunnag, who heads the party’s working group on political innovations, Det-it Khaothong, the Democrats’ acting secretary-general, and former Democrat MP Issara Seriwatthanawut.
On his Facebook account, Mr Issara said he had no desire to compete for the leadership role or any party executive post.
So far, Alongkorn Ponlaboot, the acting Democrat deputy leader, is the only member who has stepped forward to announce his bid to run.
There are also steadfast supporters in the Democrats’ northeastern chapters pushing for former party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva to return.
All 48 branches and representatives of the Democrats in the Northeast have issued a statement supporting Mr Abhisit for a second term as party leader.
Mr Abhisit, also a former prime minister, led the Democrats from March 2005 to March 2019.
Shortly after the 2019 general election, he relinquished the party leadership to face responsibility for the Democrats’ crushing defeat in the polls.
The statement supporting Mr Abhisit’s party leadership was released at a gathering of the Democrats’ northeastern members in Khon Kaen on Tuesday.
The members made known their stance ahead of the party’s assembly on Sunday to elect a new executive board and a new party leader to replace Jurin Laksanawisit.
The executive board was terminated when Mr Jurin resigned as party leader after he was unable to fulfill his promise to land at least 25 MPs in the May 14 election.
Unofficial poll results indicated the Democrats would capture fewer than 25 MP seats. The Election Commission (EC) eventually confirmed the party won 25 — although that came after Mr Jurin resigned.
NACC asks Pita to show estate papers
ITV shares still loom over his PM bid
The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) has asked Move Forward Party (MFP) leader and prime ministerial candidate Pita Limja-roenrat to file documents relating to his role as his father’s executor, and Mr Pita has until July 23 to supply the papers.
The issue of media share ownership has become a potential sticking point in his bid to lead the country as head of the coalition government.
NACC assistant secretary-general Watanachai Sommee said Mr Pita had only submitted a record of his shares in iTV to the agency after he became an MP following the 2019 general election.
Mr Watanachai said the MFP leader also attached a copy of a court order appointing him as executor of his late father’s inheritance, but the NACC could not verify the document.
However, the NACC has asked Mr Pita to file documents relating to his role as his father’s executor and he has until July 23, Mr Watanachai said.
The MFP leader informed the NACC he held 42,000 shares worth 44,100 baht in iTV Plc on behalf of other relatives because he was executor of his late father’s estate.
The Bangkok South Civil Court ordered him to hold the shares in his capacity as executor, and he has already transferred them, he told the anti-corruption commission.
The iTV shareholding led to complaints questioning his eligibility to hold a political position because the constitution prohibits a shareholder in a media company from running in a general election.
Mr Watanachai said the NACC would also check on Mr Pita’s sale of a block of land in Pran Buri district of Prachuap Khiri Khan, as the sale price was not reported.
Mr Watanachai made the remarks yesterday as the NACC published the declared assets and liabilities of 40 of the MPs whose terms ended on March 20. They included Mr Pita.
Mr Pita’s net worth has fallen 41 million baht since he entered parliament four years ago, according to his declared assets.
The MFP leader declared he was single and had 85 million baht in assets, including 1.8 million baht in cash, 15 million baht in loans to his brother, 14 rai of land in Prachuap Khiri Khan worth 18 million, a condo worth 15 million baht and 19 million baht in insurance-related assets and relevant privileges.
Cabinet defers BMA’s Green Line debt issue
The cabinet decided on Wednesday that it will let its successor deal with the debt incurred by the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) in hiring Bangkok Mass Transit System Plc (BTSC) to operate the Green Line extension, according to a Government House source.
Interior Minister Anupong Paojinda told the cabinet of the debt which the BMA is supposed to pay BTS Group Holdings for operating the Green Line extension, worth around 78 billion baht.
The cabinet acknowledged the outstanding debt and will hand it to the next government to deal with as it is beyond the power of the caretaker government to resolve.
The BMA is waiting for the government to take action on the debt problem, after the BMA submitted a letter to the Interior Ministry seeking the government’s help in sorting out the issues associated with the Green Line extension, Bangkok governor Chadchart Sittipunt said.
Mr Chadchart said the BMA has urged the government to help absorb the costs of building the Green Line’s infrastructure and the electrical and mechanical (E&M) installation work, worth around 20 billion baht, adding that the BMA was unable to take care of the costs.
Mr Chadchart said the BMA was prepared to pay for the E&M installation debt. However, this must be approved by the BMA council first.
At present, the BMA and its business arm Krungthep Thanakhom (KT) owe about 30 billion baht to the BTSC for operating and maintaining the Green Line’s first extension on the On Nut-Bearing and Saphan Taksin-Bang Wa sections, as well as the second extension on the Bearing-Samut Prakan and Mo Chit-Saphan Mai-Khu Khot sections.