For two years, the government and various associations in the energy sector have been warning that Colombia could suffer from energy shortages starting in 2027. This risk comes from various factors that affect everything from generation to the availability of transport networks, with the aggravating factor of climate change, which is no less important.
According to figures from the Mining and Energy Planning Unit (UPME), 66% of energy in Colombia comes from hydroelectric plants, which is complemented by 32% from thermal power and the remaining 2% from solar power. Meanwhile, the hope for the generation and transmission of wind energy in the country is currently placed in La Guajira, where the Grupo Energía de Bogotá is carrying out the Colectora Project, of the Grupo Energía de Bogotá, which will connect 15 wind farms and one solar farm and would generate 2,323.9 megawatts (MW), which is still under construction.
In a column in the newspaper Portafolio, Adrián Correa, director of UPME, indicates that the inclusion of renewable energies in Colombia has reached 1.8 gigawatts of installed capacity between projects in commercial operation and in testing.
But the problem is that the demand for energy has been growing twice as fast as the pace of growth in supply.
A solar park in Colombia. The country faces a greater demand for electric energy, driven by economic growth, extreme weather phenomena such as El Niño and the growing electrification of its economy, in which non-conventional renewable energies play a very important role. Image: Upme“The government’s own figures indicate that if new energy generation does not come in, starting in 2027 and 2028 we will have a structural energy deficit to meet the growing demand, whether it rains or not. It is important to differentiate that there is a structural situation and a temporary one,” explains Alexandra Hernández, executive president of SER Colombia, the country’s Renewable Energy Association.
Colombia’s Energy Matrix Capacity 2023. Source: UPME
For the expert, there are several reasons for the pressure, starting with the situation of different hydroelectric projects.
For example, Hidrohituango, an essential project for the country’s energy matrix, which would produce 13,300 gigawatt hours (GWh) per year (17% of the country’s demand), has been trying to become fully operational for almost a decade.
This is due to the opposition of the communities in the area of ??influence of the project that have registered environmental and social damage, among other reasons for licensing.
According to Upme, Colombia’s electricity demand will increase on average 2.38% annually between 2024 and 2038. This growth puts the national energy infrastructure under pressure, forcing the country to look for alternatives to meet that demand.
Annual projection of demand for Electric Energy for Colombia. Upme Source
Bottlenecks for renewable energy projects
The National Energy Plan 2020 – 2050 establishes that non-conventional sources will be the democratizing factor in the energy sector. This is because distributed generation with photovoltaic sources and energy storage enable a proliferation of supply and distribution alternatives that favor the entry of new players and empower end users.
Indeed, Colombia has shown progress in the implementation of these non-conventional sources, however, the delay in setting up these projects is worrying.
The Colombian Association of Electric Energy Generators (Acolgen), a union that claims to host 70% of the country’s renewable energy projects, states in its 2023 management report that, of the 4.5 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity expected, less than 5% was incorporated into the grid.
This is due to the fact that they do not manage to enter into operation within the planned timeframes and to the low percentage of new installed capacity actually incorporated into the network.
In the case of renewables, Hernández, from SER Colombia, indicates that they have measured the time taken to obtain permits to implement the projects, and they take between three and six years.
Hernández indicates that 60% of these projects are small, and although the procedures are not substantially different from those of other types of energy projects, they do have the particularity that they are more dispersed throughout the country, so they have more local authorities involved.
Another of the drawbacks is the difficulty of connectivity. In Colombia there are not many connection points and it is not easy to find land near them.
“In addition to procedures and permits, which are not only environmental in nature, it is necessary to make the operation of the National Interconnected System more flexible and adaptable… Regulation must be adjusted to the market, not the market to the regulation. The entry of centralized operation of the projects must be facilitated,” says Hernández.
In July 2024, Upme announced that, for the first time in Colombia, synchronous compensators will be included to modernize the electrical system and adapt it to the growing presence of renewables.
The compensators, which are needed to maintain the 60 HZ inertia that the Colombian National Interconnected System manages, will be installed in La Guajira (where the largest wind energy project in the country is being developed), Cesar and Magdalena and are part of the plan to develop seven urgent transmission works.
“But what sums it all up is simplifying and complying with regulatory issues, which, if they were met, the entry time of the projects would be reduced by half,” adds Hernández.
“It is important to coordinate between public and private entities in the sector, environmental authorities and local governments to ensure the timely development of projects in all links of the chain: generation, transmission and distribution,” stresses Francesco Bertoli, general manager of Enel Colombia.
According to the latest annual report from XM, which is the operator of the Interconnected System and the administrator of the Wholesale Energy Market of Colombia, in 2023, 32 generation projects were declared in commercial operation, representing 1,142 MW of new plants.
Of these, 56.2% corresponds to hydraulic capacity, 25.7% to thermal capacity and 18.1% comes from plants that take advantage of the sun’s energy. However, the experts consulted agree that the time gap for the execution of new projects of any type of energy generation is very long due to delays in prior consultations and environmental licensing.
Reference image of wind project in cosa. English:Image: Pixabay
Benefits and risks of renewables for Colombia
In the context of meeting a growing demand for energy, renewables have the attribute of being a low-emission source that can coexist with agricultural initiatives, has no risk of generating respiratory diseases and, in addition, is competitive in prices.
“If energy is very expensive, the economy does not grow. One cannot overcome poverty with expensive energy… Renewable energies also have a function of stabilizing prices because they come in with much lower variable costs, and also do not allow them to rise,” adds Hernández.
He adds that, although renewables provide a variable type of energy, if compared to other energies, they are still reliable per unit of energy.
“The issue is that there are a few hours. If one wants at night, when there is no sun, it has to be supplemented. That is also a reality,” says Hernández, but he also emphasizes that “wind power produces 365 days a year, 24 hours. It is variable, just like hydraulic power. However, no one questions that hydroelectric power is not reliable.”
The expert explains that, for example, during phenomena such as El Niño (drought), which with climate change will be more frequent and severe, it is necessary to diversify to complement, because when it rains less is when it is more sunny and windy.
However, Hernández is emphatic that today the alternatives that Colombia has to guarantee the energy matrix are a mix of options.
“There is no perfect energy: the one that is built quickly is expensive (gas), the one that is cheap and fast is very polluting (coal), the one that is clean and cheap (renewables) is intermittent. The best thing that can happen to Colombia, which is blessed with all, is to optimize energy with a diversified matrix,” says the expert.
Meanwhile, for Carlos Adrián Correa, director of Upme, “from the point of view of the useful life of the different alternatives for energy generation, with all the mining, materials and final disposal of panels, renewables continue to have less impact than those based on natural gas, coal, and fossil fuels in general, even when considering the entire life cycle, toxicity and land use.”
This was stated during the Fair of Economies for Life, an initiative of the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development.
But not everything is rosy. The installation and production of renewable energies also bring with them socio-environmental problems, such as those already experienced in La Guajira due to wind energy projects, which generate social disputes and alteration of landscapes in ancestral and biologically sensitive territories inhabited by indigenous communities.
The report “Threats to the Just Energy Transition in Colombia”, prepared with the support of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, emphasizes that renewable energy initiatives also have an “unfair deployment” in the sense that many communities will sacrifice their territories to make way for new forms of energy generation.
“The very construction of these parks (referring to the wind project in La Guajira) regardless of whether they use transition minerals or not, generates an environmental impact. From here comes the “fair” not as a concept delimited by what the transition and its implementation should be, but as a term derived from and enriched by the communities,” the report reads.
Other challenges of renewables
For Alejandro Castañeda, executive president of the National Association of Generating Companies (Andeg), ensuring that all projects are developed, without stigmatizing any technology, should be the main objective.
“Only with a diversified but reliable generation park will we be able to decarbonize the economy while maintaining a continuous service,” he says.
“Of the reservoirs we have in the country to store water and produce electricity, 80% are emptied within a period of three months if they do not receive water. The remaining 20% ??are really large reservoirs. It is a system that has worked very well in the last 30 years because it has that complementarity,” says Castañeada.
Added to this challenge is the storage capacity, since the production of renewable energies does not always coincide with peaks in energy demand.
“Currently, energy storage systems are very expensive assets with tariff impact, but in the future when there are decreasing costs, it would be possible to use them to integrate them into the operation of the Colombian system,” explains Jaime Orjuela, Director of Regulation of the Energy Group of Bogotá.
“In the case of non-conventional renewables, especially solar, they can be very useful for storing energy during the day and using it at night when peaks in energy consumption occur,” adds Orjuela.
Meanwhile, for Berloti, “it is important to move forward decisively so that regulation encourages the introduction of new technologies that enhance and optimize the operation of renewable energy sources.”
For this reason, he adds, “it is important to talk about energy storage solutions and, within the framework of market architecture, the implementation of binding dispatch, intra-day market sessions, as well as a market for complementary services.”
The implementation of renewable energies in Colombia, such as solar and wind, has been slow due to regulatory and socio-environmental obstacles.
But despite this, the country currently ranks 35th out of the 120 countries that make up the World Economic Forum’s Global Energy Transition Index 2024, “which shows that it is very well prepared for the transition,” as indicated in the report ‘Mobilizing investment in clean energy in Colombia: solutions to accelerate financing’.
In this sense, it is essential that national strategic investment really meets the criteria of justice of the energy transition, advances in infrastructure and streamlines the procedures to take full advantage of these sources, balancing sustainability, efficiency and equity in the country’s energy development.
