What current renewable initiatives are underway in South America?

As energy security and diversification become crucial interconnections between South American countries, they have begun to gain new perspective and strategic meaning. Many factors will decide whether or not the continent drives to further energy integration. What lies ahead is a combination of political will, strategic thinking, business and economic factors.

At this time, there are a few initiatives in the works to move South America towards the usage of renewable energy. Three of these initiatives are outlined below.

Andean Energy Alliance

The First Meeting of the Council of Andean Community Ministers of Energy, Electricity, Hydrocarbons and Mines, held in Quito in January 2004, defined the bases for the Andean Energy Alliance (AEA), to be established through efforts in 5 areas:

• Construction of energy (electricity and gas) markets integrated through harmonized physical systems and regulatory frameworks;
• Positioning in international hydrocarbon markets in a strategic context of energy security;
• Promotion in the Andean countries of entrepreneurial development of “energy clusters”;
• Framework for the negotiation and classification of energy services in the WTO and other international organizations; and
• Development of the renewable energy sources theme and its tie-in with the environmental theme and with the Integral Plan for Social Development (IPSD).

OLADE – Latin American Energy Organization

Mission:
To contribute to the region’s integration, sustainable development and energy security, advising and promoting cooperation and coordination among its member countries.

Vision:
OLADE is the political and technical-support organization by means of which its Member States undertake common efforts to achieve integration and development in the regional energy market.

LOTRED-SA

Long-Term climate Reconstruction and Dynamics of (southern) South America: A collaborative, high-resolution multi-proxy approach.

Regional high-resolution multi-proxy climate reconstructions for the last ca. 1000 years are a priority area of future research within IGBP-PAGES. While considerable progress has been made on the northern hemisphere (references), adequate data sets and reconstructions are missing for the southern hemisphere. Regional reconstructions are particularly important since regional climate change and extremes exhibit much larger amplitudes than hemispheric and global reconstructions. Monthly to seasonal temperature reconstruction for Europe since 1500 AD (Luterbacher et al. 2004, Science 303) and the drought reconstruction for the western US (Cook et al. 2004, Science 306) have set new standards for regional scales (references). Similar studies are missing for other regions of the world.

This LOTRED- SA initiative is conceived as a collaborative long-term effort that seeks:

1. to collate the large number of disperse already existing and new multi-proxy paleoclimate data sets (documentary data, early instrumental data and natural proxies) for the last ca. 1000 - 2000 years available for South America, and
2. to use the Mann et al. (1998), Luterbacher et al. (2004) and Moberg et al. (2005) methodologies to work towards a regional reconstruction at different temporal and spatial resolution for southern South America.

This initiative seeks to involve research groups from different countries working within a common frame for a common goal.[1]

Research by: Kristin Stiner