From
Cledis Candelaresi
Due to the delay in the implementation of its green agenda Argentina it is losing the abundant credit available around the world for projects that fight global warming. Between funds prepared by the German government and the IMF, the country has a minimum threshold of over 3,000 million dollars on hand if the state or local companies come forward with concrete proposals to decontaminate or alleviate the effects of climate change.
Ironically, with external funding blocked for Argentina, they are not taking advantage of it new dollars that would facilitate some key structural projects such as the construction of new electricity transmission lines, essential for incorporating “green” energy (wind or solar).
A few weeks ago, Germany made resources available for power transmission lines. And the IMF has a special line of loans to pay for companies that reduce environmental pollution, which Argentina could access through an independent route from the current extended facilitation agreement.
Last year the IMF inaugurated the Resilience and Sustainability linewhich provides low-rate, long-term dollars to finance structural reforms compatible with the decarbonization agenda.
Argentina could receive up to $1.3 billionbut there are no consolidated initiatives that allow us to exploit this source of fresh dollars.
The list is completed with other multilateral organizations that operate as development banks: the IDB, the World Bank or the Andean Development Corporation, which in just three years has to switch from 20% to 40% of its portfolio linked to environmentally compatible developments.
WB provides credits with a degressive rate, which will decrease to the extent that the funded project demonstrates that it contributes to decontamination.
As a middle-income country, Argentina is not on the bank’s agenda. But, as Di Tella Lucía Spinelli, the institution’s energy specialist, warned in a recent seminar, “the climate dimension” allows the country to have otherwise inaccessible loans.
Also there are private banks that offer this opportunity, in which only a few local energy companies such as YPF and PAE have started to participate. Those of Spanish origin, Santander and BBVA, among those with the most active policies.
Despite public proclamations in international forums made by President Alberto Fernández, Argentina is lagging behind in its environmental agenda. The current law on renewable energy provides that in seven years 20% of electricity must come from renewable sources, a percentage that the Government has threatened to increase at one point by 10 percentage points.
However, officials and businessmen alike discount that goal as utopian. According to Bernardo Andrews, head of the Wind Chamber, for this task Argentina would have to expand its facilities at five times the rate it is doing (from 50 gigabytes to 250 gigabytes per year).
immediately $4,000 million is needed to expand the electricity transmission network to accommodate energy from wind or solar farmslocated away from consumer centers.
Economy is planning a Federal Electricity Plan, but has not yet put in place a mechanism to finance it and is now trying to convince producers that it is better to go ahead with smaller projects that are co-financed by them.
The idea is to seek a new regulatory framework to formalize private participation in electricity transmission projects. Perhaps a Public Private Participation mechanism (PPP) as the Government of Mauricio Macri tried to design, aborted due to lack of capital.
Even under the previous management many projects have been contracted to incorporate green energy under the umbrella of a very beneficial local law: long-term dollar contracts for new generators and a guarantee fund that would help raise the money that, even so, in many cases they couldn’t.
Many proposals to produce electricity from a source other than gas or oil ended up falling apart like a row of papers. And at some point, the economy had to overcome the dilemma of backing those deals at the risk of promoting the bankruptcy of the insurers who guaranteed them.
But renewable energies are only one chapter in the fight against global warminga battle in which official actions tend to liquefy due to a lack of internal consensus on what to do and how.
Argentina pollutes relatively little (less than 1% globally) and that it has the right to deepen its development as the main polluters of the world, the United States and China in the lead, have done.
Perhaps it is on the basis of these data that the Minister of the Economy, Sergio Massa, and the Undersecretary of Energy, Flavia Royón, underlined at the IDEA Experience meeting held a few days ago in Neuquén that “Argentina is a financial debtor but an environmental creditor.
A sentence that relates to the audacious proposal that at one point was launched by the Minister of the Environment, Juan Cabandié, who the country swaps debt for climate stocks. For example, by replacing debt payments with reforestation or by capturing the methane emitted by cows.
Finally, the idea is supported by an article published at the end of last year by the director of the Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, in which she outlined this formula.
There are two types of actions to combat global warming. “Mitigate”, which implies contaminating less. Or “adaptation,” which means making changes to alleviate the effects of climate change, such as the drought that today has deprived public coffers of billions of dollars. Here’s the thing.
But the definition of government, shared by the opposition, is bet on the development of gas and oil, with Vaca Muerta as the flagship. This is the current priority of the official libido-consuming energy policy.
Exporting hydrocarbons could turn the current $5 billion energy deficit into an $8 billion surplus in just two years, according to government officials and industry consultants. A unbeatable priority target.
But in order for this promised oasis not to become a mirage, it is first necessary to resolve what Ricardo Markous, CEO of Tecpetrol, called “the chicken and egg dilemma” in that Patagonian conclave: To generate dollars, companies must first have them.
Techint’s energy leader has publicly called for enforcement of the resolution allowing oil and gas exporters to freely dispose of 20 to 30 percent of export-generated foreign currency and warned that more drilling equipment cannot be imported to boost productivity. production due to traps, among other complaints.
In diplomatic terms, Alberto Fernández can finally come close to the environmental parameters of the Democratic president of the United States, Joe Biden, with an idea of consensus in the world. Gas is the least polluting of hydrocarbons and therefore a fuel for the energy transition. How not to take advantage of this shortcut and why think about the green button.
Source: Clarin
