Some analysts think there will not be enough generating capacity to satisfy demand as early as 2025. The Minister, unsurprisingly, assures that there will be. Obviously both demand and supply will determine what happens and both are highly uncertain.
Read more
Now that El Niño fades in the rearview mirror (really?) questions arise about the next climate event and whether Colombia has enough of a pipeline for new capacity to handle it.
Read moreThe future of Colombia's electric grid appears to hinge on a blend of renewable and traditional energy sources, a recent projection by the Mining and Energy Planning Unit (UPME) indicates.
Read more
In July, the Colombian government revealed its energy transition “roadmap”. In late September, the International Energy Agency (IEA), a global energy thinktank, published its “Net Zero Roadmap: A Global Pathway to Keep the 1.5oC Goal in Reach” and then recently published its World Energy Outlook for 2023. The public version of the IEA’s database does not break out Colombia so we cannot do a direct comparison, but we can make some inferences. So what, if anything, can we learn from these about Colombia’s transition roadmap?
Read more
Last March, I wrote an article called “We’ll always have Paris” talking about the IPCC’s AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023 report which concluded that the world was unlikely to make the COP 21 – aka “Paris” – commitments to limit global warming to 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels by 2100. A recently published chart says we may already have blown it.
Read more
In our recent article about MinEnergia’s roadmap, Greased Lightning, we noted that MinEnergia was not using the UPME’s forecasts, at least for the Transport sector and we asked “if the Ministry is not using the UPME’s numbers, whose are they using?” The Ministry website has an Excel with all the numbers (that we swear wasn’t there before) that allows a detailed comparison and an Appendix (that we must have missed) with an explanation of the different assumptions. At least now we know.
Read more
Biofuels enjoy some positive press recently in Colombia and elsewhere but I wonder if the opportunity is being framed correctly. There are no fewer carbon atoms – no fewer Cs – in biofuel but the end-to-end process produces less CO2, as much as 86% less.
Read more
I have been involved with forecasting since the mid 1970s. My undergraduate essay deals with forecasting models and my masters’ concerns the effect of outliers or unusual extreme events on projections. I have built forecasting models for everything from commuter train ticket sales to oil field production and supervised forecasting teams that produced millions of datapoints every year. But I still get surprised when people mix up where forecasts come from and what they mean. The lead graph from the UPME’s latest energy projections (above) illustrates the issue.
Read more
Colombia is discussing energy prices and reservoir levels. Experts spoke on the matter.
Read moreThe Mining-Energy Planning Unit (UPME) announced an update to the 2020-2050 energy plan (PEN).
Read more
XM, operator of the National Interconnected System (SIN) and administrator of the Wholesale Energy Market (MEM), reported on the behavior of this metric in 2020. NOTE: Truncated scale
Read more
XM reported the energy consumption in March this year and the behavior of this metric was positive compared to the previous year. The company said that demand is falling in the middle scenario of the Mining and Energy Planning Unit (UPME) forecasts.
Read moreThe Colombian government continues taking measures to help stabilize Electricaribe’s service in the country, while finding a new operator. Natasha Avendaño, Superintendent of Public Services, announced new resources for the firm.
Read moreÁngela Montoya, president of the Colombian Association of Electric Power Generators (Acolgen) explained why ‘El Niño’ phenomenon will not affect energy tariffs this year.
Read moreThe emergence of Hidroituango has created a difficult financial and operational situation for EPM and this will take years to be solved. However, the firm is not the only one affected, as Medellin's revenues will decrease because of this crisis as well.
Read more