# Ecuadors Renewable Energy

Carlos Zorrilla
Ecuador is one of those Ring-of-Fire countries with enormous geothermal energy producing
potential. It has one of the highest per-capita water allotments in the world and, being a
mountainous and relatively rainy place, it is home one of the highest concentrations of rivers per
square kilometers on the planet, making the countrys hydraulic potential vast (estimated at 22,000
Megawatts1). Though not nearly as sunny as southern Peru or most of Chile, the countrys Aeolic
potential, estimated 900 Megawatts, would help it free itself from its dependence on petroleum to
produce electricity. Helped by the nations year-around growing season, biomass is another
potential source of renewable energy underused. Add to the renewable resources menu its 2,400
kilometers of coast line facing the not-so-tranquil Pacific Ocean where untold megawatts of wave
and 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, the
country gets 95% of its overall energy needs from fossil fuels1 (Ecuador exports petroleum, but
imports gas). Even more incredibly, in light of all the renewable alternatives, is the $ 3.8 billion in
subsidies the government spends every year just to subsidize fossil fuels to power its economy2.
When it comes to generating electricity, the panorama is not so dire and, in fact, it is vastly
improving. Right now, hydraulic power generates 58% of the countrys electricity; a respectable sum.
However, aside from the 1% it gets from biomass, the rest, 41%, come from the burning of fossil
fuels3. The country has big plans to change things around, however, and by 2016 it plans to get
95.53% of its electricity from dams, 0.32% from biomass, 0.57% from wind, 0.72% from geothermal
and only 4.86% from the burning of fossil fuels3. To that end, the present government has embarked
on massive dam building project, and is simultaneously building eight large and medium
hydroelectric projects to not only replace the burning of petroleum with cleaner energy, but also
export it to neighboring countries.
Its been a very long time since large dams were seen as the best solution to solve the worlds energy
scarcity, especially in biologically diverse places like Ecuador. Flooding forests, not only releases huge
amount of methane, a greenhouse gas roughly 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, but it can
also impact peoples access to sustainable sources of food, severely affect cultures as well as species
facing extinction, and uproot whole communities. Large dams can also be a cause of health
problems: in a country that only treats about 8% of its residual water, this could be problematic, to
say the least. For example, in its rush to change the energy matrix of the country, Ecuador is
damming up the Guayllabamba River in several places. The Guayllabamba is a little more than an
open sewer that drains Quitos wastewater. Things could be done better: at the same time the
government is building large dams in the Intag region, several micro and small community
hydroelectric 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 the
planet, and saves money for the country. However, one must ask if the benefits are worth it if, as in
the case of Ecuador, the country wants to direct a good part of that clean energy to power
environmentally 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-renewable
resource in a land brimming with renewable sources of energies? I attribute it to just one of the wellknown effects of the Natural Resource Curse that affects countries rich in natural resources. The
relative overabundance of a certain resource, in this case petroleum, tends to make politicians and
other decision makers blind to develop other alternatives to drive their economies. If there is plenty
of 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 to
the brink of a global ecological collapse. If that mentality doesn't change, changing the source of
energy will not be enough to effect the kind and depth of change humanity needs to avert the
environmental catastrophe that is looming ever closer in the horizon.

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 20142017
4. Senagua, DHCP. 2013. Gestin de recursos hdricos en el ecuador *Retrieved 27 August 2013
Additional Sources
2020. OLADE.Observatorio de Energas Renovables en Amrica Latina y el Caribe: ECUADOR Informe Final
Producto 1: Lnea Base de las Tecnologas Energticas Producto 2: Estado del Arte