The world has embarked on a general commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For some decades now, organizations such as the United Nations have promoted the energy transformation, known as the ‘Green Deal’ from fossil fuels to renewable alternatives, as the consulting firm Deloitte points out.
Colombia is also moving towards this goal and that is why the country is advancing in the elaboration of a climate strategy to achieve decarbonization in 2050 and reduce 51% of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
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Reducing CO2 emissions from the industry is part of the objectives to achieve the goals of 2050.
In this context, one speaks of the decarbonizationname that has been given to the aforementioned reduction of the carbon footprint, a measurement of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
A United Nations report for Decarbonization Day told the cement, iron and steel, and chemical and petrochemical industries as the most relevant issuers and who must take faster and more effective measures to comply with this global transition.
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The urgency is explained by the scenario facing humanity: a climate change that has brought consequences such as displacements, deaths and diseases.
“To stabilize the climate it will be necessary to significantly, quickly and sustainably reduce greenhouse gas emissions to finally achieve zero net emissions of greenhouse gases. carbon dioxide (CO2), the main cause of climate change”, says Oliverio Álvarez, partner in charge of the Energy Regulation Area of the consultancy Deloitte, quoted by ‘BBVA’.
But this process is not easy, since it implies a transformation in the way of doing business, it is expensive, it requires large-scale technological innovations and the commitment of economic sectors and governments.
“Fossil fuels are a dead end, as one Secretary General has said (…) We have to increase the use of renewable energy to reach approximately 60% of global energy capacity over the next eight years, which means roughly tripling the installation capacity over the course of this decade,” said Selwin Hart, Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General for Climate Action at COP27.
A likely scenario, as the world has tripled its renewable energy capacity in the last decade.
Decarbonization in Colombia
In accordance with the approach of the government of President Gustavo Petro, its policies in the energy sector are aimed at a “fair and sustainable energy transition”, as described by the Ministry of Mines and Energy in his web page.
There they emphasize that this transition will be gradual and will have five fundamental axes, the first being greater investments in clean energy and decarbonization.
There is also the progressive replacement of the demand for fossil fuels, greater energy efficiency, revision and eventual relaxation of regulations to accelerate the generation of clean energy and the reindustrialization of the Colombian economy.
“The transition times will arise from the results of these axes, in such a way that progress is made in conjunction with the export transition, with a more diversified economy, less dependent on oil and coal, and at the same time with fiscal and macroeconomic sustainability”, describes the ministry in an article.
Faced with this scenario, which seeks to meet the goals of 50% GHG reduction by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2050, there are several positions.
According to the results of a study carried out by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Center for Sustainable Development Goals for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Universidad de los Andes (CODS), which aims to understand the challenges and the opportunities for Colombia in the path of decarbonization of its economy in the long termthis path means savings.
The research evaluated four sectors: agriculture, energy, transportation, and waste management and found that decarbonization is desirable from an economic point of view, since the benefits exceed the mitigation costs, representing savings that vary between 57%, 105 % and 233% of GDP in 2019, depending on the discount rate.
“For the country, it would not carry out this worst decarbonization mitigation strategy, because it would lose the opportunity to save these amounts of money that are significant, even compared to the size of the Colombian economy,” said Ricardo Delgado, director of the Regional Center of Energy Studies and CODS Researcher.
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To this would be added savings associated with lower operating costs, higher productivity, savings in damage to health or costs avoided due to the effects of climate change on the economy.
On the contrary, the former Minister of Finance, Mauricio Cárdenas, assured in a column for EL TIEMPO that in a work he published with Sebastián Orozco, they believe that the best strategy to meet Colombia’s commitments will cost between 7.7 and 12.7 percent of GDP per year until 2050.
“According to our calculations, Colombia’s climate transition is one of the most costly. The equivalent figure for the United States and the European Union is 6.5% of GDP. The main reason is that we are a developing country that every day requires more energy, so meeting goals requires increasing effort,” he explains.
On the other hand, it should be noted that today the Colombian economy is highly dependent on fossil fuels, energy and manufacturingas stated in a study that will present the carbon footprint in the Colcap stock index made up of the 25 companies with the highest market capitalization in the country.
Added to this is the fact that the livestock sector is the largest source of GHG, in addition to being linked to the deforestationanother of the phenomena that impact the carbon footprint.
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For Manuel Rodríguez Becerra, former Minister of the Environment of Colombia, “the agenda for decarbonization of the economy is substantially different from that of developed countries, since our (GHG) emissions come from 55 percent of deforestation and agriculture, similar to the countries of Latin America”, he pointed out in an opinion column for this newspaper.
And he pointed out that “complying with the international goal of reducing GHG emissions in such a way that a temperature increase of 1.5 °C is not exceeded does not seem feasible, which means that in the future we will witness extreme weather events with more frequency”.
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However, another position is that of Manuel Guzmán-Hennessey, director of the Latin American network on climate change Klimaforum Latinoamerica Network -KLN-, who said in a column for EL TIEMPO that this decade is “the last opportunity to stop the climate catastrophe announced not by catastrophists, but by scientists”, which is why action must be taken in favor of a change.
LAURA ALEJANDRA ALBARRACÍN RESTREPO
DIGITAL SCOPE WRITING
TIME
