With nearly a kilometer of elevated infrastructure complete, Bogotá’s long-delayed metro might actually be built. This and other stories in our quarterly update of rail and public transportation news in Colombia.
Read moreThe COP16 / COP29 double header is over, bookending the US presidential and congressional elections, perhaps the most significant event in climate policy in recent memory. What, if anything, are the implications for the planet and for Colombia.
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Colombia’s energy sector faces dual crises: a growing gap between gas demand and production, and delays in energy projects that heighten the risk of blackouts reminiscent of the 1992 outage. As alarms sound for 2024, the urgency to address these issues intensifies.
Read moreThe debate between industry associations and the government can be characterized or perhaps caricaturized by the dichotomy in the title. Maybe the debate is fundamental (as the industry associations and liberal economists believe) or maybe it is irrelevant because the two can coexist.
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We reported earlier this week that reservoir levels were improving behind hydro dams. Last time, that triggered MinEnergia to suggest / order XM to shift the matrix away from more expensive and dirtier thermal power. Is that happening? We also check in on solar, the third leg of the stool, to see what it is doing.
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COP16 in Cali was a great success for the city and for MinAmbiente Susana Muhamad. However, given that it ended without a consensus declaration, it failed to achieve its ultimate purpose. But lots of groups had lots to say and some of these were relevant for green power and for Colombia.
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Halloween is not as pervasive in Colombia as Christmas nor as pervasive as it is in other countries. Nor is November 1st the “Day of the Dead” as it is in Mexico. This Monday is a “puente”, Friday’s “All Souls Day” slid to the other side of the weekend because Colombians prefer that. Likely no one will knock on our door tonight (few or no kids in our building) and orange and black is nowhere to be seen except in a few shopping centers. But scary stories abound in the energy sector!
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A recently-published academic article says that, over a twenty-year period, using coal to produce electricity contributes less to greenhouse gases than using natural gas. Natural gas produces less carbon dioxide but more of the more-damaging methane. Do we have energy transition backwards?
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Time for our quarterly update of XM key indicators. Demand continues to rise – at least regulated i.e. household and small business demand – and the issues with hydro cause the matrix to shift in response.
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President Gustavo Petro has made several speeches about energy policy lately and fidelity to reality has not been their hallmark. (Note how complicated it can be to avoid using certain words that might more accurately describe the situation but which the ePowerColombia lawyers have recommended we do not print.)
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The government’s plans to revive Colombia’s rail network move slowly but the press was active this quarter with news about the main cargo projects, regional light rail and, of course, Bogotá’s Metro. The government also presented its full plans and estimated costs to Congress.
Read moreThis week in Hydrocarbons Colombia, we published an article based on an Andeg press release about the government’s proposed carbon tax increase. There are either fundamental errors in the proposal or in Andeg’s interpretation of how it would work.
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A couple of weeks ago, ACIEM, the Colombian engineers’ association, held its annual ENERCOL energy conference and National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH), Orlando Velandia gave the closing remarks. He said a couple of things that seem to go against the grain of conventional wisdom.
Read moreIn the 1990s, the traditional, hierarchical telecommunications industry fought with those advocating newer, flatter networks. We called it the “Netheads versus the Bellheads” since, in North America, the largest traditional operators had come out of the so-called “Bell System”. Sitting in ENERCOL last week and listening to the traditional, hierarchical energy industry do battle with Petro government representatives advocating newer, flatter energy networks, I could not help but notice the analogy.
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Recently President Gustavo Petro got angry about press saying that “coal saved Colombia” during El Niño. He’s partly wrong and he’s partly right.
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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 moreThe current Colombian government certainly believes in the green hydrogen opportunity. As recently as earlier this month we have seen new announcements of Ministry plans. But is this real or just a feel-good press release?
Read moreThe obvious answer is yes. Eventually. Unless President Gustavo Petro is right, and the world comes to an end in 2030. (He did not provide a precise date so we recommend being prepared for everything to still be around until at least December 31st, 2030, just in case.) But many have doubts that the government will achieve its goals for the period 2022 to 2026. A recent article by Bloomberg Linea tries to address the issue.
Read moreYesterday’s holiday in Colombia coincided with the two-year anniversary of Gustavo Petro’s presidency. We are now at the mid-way point in his period. He – and we – have two more years to go. How do we evaluate his midterm examinations?
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Actually, we did not need XM’s data on electricity demand to know that the Colombian economy passes through a slow patch but it helps that the signals are consistent.
Read moreA recent Financial Times Energy Source article describes a disastrous transition project from South Africa. Describing it as a “cautionary tale”, the FT story demonstrates the problems with accelerating the shift from fossil fuels before having all the pieces in place. Colombia can learn from it.
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No this isn’t a Moiré pattern and you are not expected to see John Lennon’s ghost or something like that if you squint at it long enough or under the influence of an inappropriate substance (legal or otherwise). It also isn’t a picture of some fabric design you saw one Sunday at the flea market in Usaquen.
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Although XM has not published demand statistics for June, we do have the official summary of supply / generation. As El Niño came to a slow end, someone in authority decided it was over at the end of April and thermoelectric generation fell dramatically. We also check the solar statistics to confirm the positive press releases that came out last week.
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The Petro government is doing its best to promote rail and other forms of public transport but this year so far, the story is not great: rail cargo is down 11% year-over-year. The issue is coal (over 99% of all rail-carried cargo) which is down the same 11%. This and other stories about rail and mass transport from our review of the second quarter.
Read moreThe papers all say Andrés Camacho will soon leave his post of MinEnergia and even name his replacement. At the risk of President Gustavo Petro changing his – or Camacho’s – mind at the last minute, we reflect on the minister’s brief passage for the role.
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Colombia’s carbon tax is a mere US$6 per ton of CO2equivalent, perhaps a useful source revenue but hardly a disincentive. What would an effective tax look like?
Read moreReaders of our sister publication, Hydrocarbons Colombia, know the ANH well. The National Hydrocarbons Agency regulates the oil and gas business: high-level prospecting, assigning blocks, writing contracts with companies, policing those contracts, collecting royalties and other so-called “economic rights of the nation”. In his CREG-less vision of the future, President Gustavo Petro sees an expanded role for the ANH.
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El Niño made it clear that Colombia needs more, non-hydro, generating capacity as climate change increases the risk of drought. Government policy and good environmental stewardship say that will not be thermal. But if the answer says “other nature-based renewables” then the country risks trading one type of variability for another. We looked at XM data from 2023 to see what we could learn.
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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.
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Our recent article about the viability of renewable energy investments leaned heavily on Levelized Cost of Energy or LCOE and, coincidentally, the Energy Institute (EI) updated its LCOE estimates for a range of technologies. For comparison and for local flavor, we found the UPME LCOE’s on the website (with some questions pending) and the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) estimates.
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Time for an update on the green (and other hued low-emission) hydrogen opportunity in Colombia. We look at that changing rainbow from a global perspective, report on some short-term challenges in the country with hydrogen-based transportation and reflect on the government’s efforts to put green H2 production at the center of its industrial strategy.
Read moreAt the end of February, we wrote about the importance of storage for highly variable renewable energy sources especially solar whose efficiency depends on latitude, location and sun’s angle to generate energy. And we noted the importance of finding greener solutions than the existing lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries to do this. In the meantime, we found a company in Panama selling a supercapacitor-based storage solution that meets these challenges.
Read moreWe return to the book The Price is Wrong by Brett Christophers to look at his conclusions and recommendations as well as the implications for Colombia and President Gustavo Petro’s policies.
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El Niño has dried up Colombian reservoirs, sapping the country’s ability to generate hydropower. The entirely predictable consequence is a dramatic increase in thermal generation from fossil fuels, the “Illuminati’s” worst nightmare. Lately, we have zoomed into XM’s data looking at daily statistics to see how the reservoir situation evolves. In this article, we mostly zoom out to monthly data to see what the larger trends might mean, zooming in to look again at Hidroituango.
Read moreI am reading a new book by geographer, Brett Christophers, called The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet. He argues that, despite their now low theoretical cost per kilowatt-hour, solar and wind power, will not achieve investor profitability targets, resulting in under investment, certainly insufficient investment to displace fossil-fuel-based generation. That means either governments must continue to subsidize solar and wind power or – probably Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s preferred solution – state-owned enterprises will transform the energy matrix.
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Last week we demonstrated declining reservoir levels caused by El Niño and showed the consequences for hydropower generation. We also briefly mentioned what was taking up the slack. Here, we go into that in more, graphic, detail. Guess what? Petro-despised fossil fuel-generated power rises to fill the gap.
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Water levels behind hydro dams plumb unknown territory, the lowest this century. Although MinEnergia Andrés Camacho says everything is under control, even the normally indifferent President Gustavo Petro expressed concern. Industry associations express serious concern, and, this late in the game, no one has a good solution.
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The transition to train transport seems “on rails” this year in Colombia if you will excuse the expression, with government policy statements, new projects and new equipment. And we will not even get into President Gustavo Petro’s obsession with an underground subway in Bogota!
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Continuing on from last week’s Thursday Thought we look at some of the relevant factors using disguised data from a member of the Colombian electricity sector.
Read moreEveryone can agree that tariffs should be fair. Who would agree they could be unfair? The Minister of Energy, Andrés Camacho, says “Our goal is to guarantee fair rates.” But what does that mean? Fair to whom? Everyone? Is that even possible? Are Colombian tariffs unfair and how do you make that determination in the first place?
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The blank page stares accusingly at me with terrible consequences for my self confidence and difficulties for publishing a useful Thursday Thought for today. The problem is not a lack of issues in the green energy sector but too many from which to choose.
Read moreAs the sun goes down on a Ministry of Energy approved and organized Energy Community, what will happen? Darkness? Grid power? Or will a storage device kick in? The topic has not been discussed much, at least in the press.
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The graph shows data to October 2023 because Andemos, the car sales industry association, has apparently lost interest in publishing EV sales data. Full year data confirms the same conclusion. In fact, hybrids grew faster than battery EVs in 2023 so the BEV share must have fallen.
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OK so maybe this reference is too dated, too pop music, too North American, too cliched and we should not have used it. Accepted. But sometimes “Is that all there is?” just captures the issue perfectly.
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With El Niño playing havoc with hydro generation, no surprise that Colombia’s electricity matrix is changing rapidly leading to lower contributions from renewable sources. That’s not what we wanted to happen with energy transition.
Read moreePC readers know our skepticism about Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s idea of doing away with utility companies, generating all power with rooftop solar. National newspaper El Tiempo picked up a Washington Post article about a “zero electricity bill” community in Florida (Hunters Point) so we thought we would have a look again at the topic.
Read moreWe recently reported that Parex, a major oil and gas producer in Colombia, had received permission to produce 15 to 60kW of geothermal electrical power, with the potential to escalate to 120kW. This marks a major milestone for a no/low carbon energy that the country should excel at.
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President Gustavo Petro and MinAmbiente Susana Muhamad insist that El Niño is under control. The only really horrific climate-related disaster the country has had was caused by too much rain not too little, a local reminder that higher global temperatures mean more extreme weather not necessarily drier (or wetter for that matter) universally. So what is happening to the country’s hydro reservoirs and what power generation choices do we have?
Read moreLast year at this time, we did an article looking ahead to 2023. Not quite “Fearless Forecasts” like we do for our sister publication because policy issues dominate the debate on green energy more than statistics. Let’s have a look at how we did and make some bold – ok maybe not so bold – predictions for 2024.
Read moreThis week’s long essay was supposed to be about COP28, which (according to the schedule) would finish on Tuesday December 12th at 11am Dubai time. It did not. COPs have never finished on time and this one had sufficient controversy over the language around fossil fuels that I did not expect it to finish in time for my deadline.
Read moreWe wrote an article about regional passenger rail projects on October 27th and shortly afterward, started collecting Colombia train stories for an eventual summary report (this one!). We got more than 15 in just over five weeks which is three per week. Not quite a “trending topic” but an important issue.
Read moreToday begins the United Nations annual climate conference known as “COP28”. This year held in Dubai, the environmental movement expresses outrage but the controversy has drawn more attention than many previous editions which might help the cause.
Read moreAs I look for content for ePC, I often find short items that I think have something relevant to say to our readers but they are too brief or not “Colombian” enough to justify their own article. I leave them open on my browser and review them from time to time, closing the windows that time or interest has passed on by. Last year at about this time I published a “Random Thursday Thoughts” that collected a few of these and now seems like a good point to do that again. At the end, I review last year’s column to see how twelve months have treated the items: moldy or aged like fine wine.
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Dialogo Canada is an annual forum to exchange ideas between Colombia and Canada about business and related policy issues. Organized by the Colombia-Canada Chamber of Commerce, the 13th edition was held on November 15th in Bogotá. After the introductory speeches, the first panel was on hydrogen (H2), a major topic for MinEnergia and investors, both local and international.
Read more Economic growth, the Colombian government’s plans for electrification and exporting green hydrogen all require significant increases in generating and transmission capacity. So far, the Roadmap and the National Energy Plan update have only looked at demand and how policy makers want to see it served. In October, the UPME published its annual report on capacity requirements to meet this demand.
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Recently national newspaper El Espectador published a syndicated article about leveraging Just Energy Transition Partners (JETP) to Latin America. JETP offers funding to emerging markets countries to accelerate their energy transition. Would this work for Colombia?
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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?
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“Water under the bridge” refers to “events that are in the past and consequently no longer to be regarded as important”. But with El Niño already drying up Colombia’s hydroelectric dam reservoirs, energy planners have to worry about keeping back all the water they can.
Read moreColombia is about to embark on an ambitious journey in its energy landscape, entering the uncharted territory of geothermal. A recent symposium, organized by Brigard & Urrutia, convened a gathering of experts to discuss the prospects and challenges of geothermal energy in the country.
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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.
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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.
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With his unmistakable talent to grab headlines with outrageous ideas that most people / voters will think are wonderful, President Gustavo Petro suggested a few weeks ago that public transport should be “free”. Of course, it will not be “free”. Taxpayers will have to pay for it.
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Even when you are sure of what you are doing, a second opinion always helps. Also, when you need to be public with your actions, you always worry about what others – especially experts – think. So the Colombian government must have nervously awaited the opinions of the International Energy Agency (IEA) about the country’s energy transition plans.
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Canary Media is a very good US-focused newsletter on renewable energy. The lead chart (from its website) shows the rapid decline in costs for “green energies” and posits that they will continue to fall while those of fossil fuels will at best remain flat.
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Updating our XM database for July 2023 we see continued, significant growth in demand from the mining sector, much faster growth than output from the industry.
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We recently questioned whether El Niño had hit us but weather experts repeatedly say that it will arrive, perhaps as early as September, perhaps it already has. Economic experts have speculated that the consequences for Latin America could be grave.
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In our fourth article on the Colombian government’s proposed energy roadmap, we look at the transport sector, the biggest consumer of energy and one of the hardest to wean off fossil-fuels.
Read moreMinEnergia recently published four key reports for its energy roadmap. No. We haven’t read them cover to cover. At 858 pages, we doubt anyone will. But we have scanned for the key messages and hope this summary gives our readers value.
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We ran out of what used to be called “column inches” but modernly would be called “word count” last week before completing the graphs we wanted to show from the UPME’s updated energy forecasts. This week focuses mostly on emissions but a bit on green H2 installed capacity.
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The government’s mining and energy think-tank (Unidad de Planeacción Minera-Energetica) updated its long term forecasts of the sector out to 2052. This will not satisfy calls for short-term forecast updates in the face of El Niño but does give investors planning scenarios for the medium and long term. And it is Irene Véléz’s parting shot at the energy sector, an intriguing mix of class struggle, apocalyptic fearmongering and hard-headed realism about things like the role of thermogeneration.
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Monica Gasca is head of Hidrógeno Colombia, an industry association that was set up almost before there was a hydrogen industry. Her mission is to promote sustainable hydrogen which is a crucial step towards decarbonizing Colombia’s economy and exploring export opportunities. We had a virtual conversation to discuss low carbon hydrogen production, ammonia exports and decarbonization of the Colombian industry.
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Two weeks ago, I wrote about wanting XM data in an easy format so I could dig below the headline numbers and see trends rather than one month at a time. We managed to fill in a database back to December 2020 so we have the last 21 months of the Duque government (Diego Mesa was MinEnergia) and the first 11 months of the Petro government with Irene Vélez at the helm.
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The press turns against electric vehicles in some countries and the public too. In England, a famous comedian writes in a left-of-center paper that he feels deceived by EVs and an editor for a right-of-center paper says “The electric car ‘revolution’ is a disaster before it’s begun”. Colombian business newspaper Portafolio questions whether we can achieve 100% EVs in 2040. What is happening and why? And what should I do with my 20-year-old Volkswagen Golf?
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I had a brilliant idea for this week’s Thursday Thoughts but when I sat down to write it – at nearly the last minute as usual – I found I didn’t have all the data I needed for what I wanted to do. So, I went for something different, leading to the blank page which writers have nightmares about. I waited in vain for the Muse to arrive. Writing about the data challenge itself gave me something interesting to share.
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OK. Not strictly on topic. But we have to have fun every once in a while, and I’m sure your companies have discussed what Artificial Intelligence (AI) means for your operation. I have experimented with some of the more interesting tools, ChatGPT and MidJourney, so thinking you will find this useful. Or amusing. Or both! Or neither. (This article has lots of graphics. It may be better viewed on a laptop or pad and over WiFi.)
Read more I think efficiency gets short shrift in energy transition discussions because policy makers fixate on shiny technologies like green hydrogen and storage systems. So I was pleased to see several prominent mentions in MinEnergia’s recent roadmap methodology document.
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In flurry of excitement, we thought that MinEnergia had (almost) made its commitment to publish its energy roadmap in May (almost) when a document appeared with the words “hoja de ruta” i.e. roadmap. Nope. All we have is a “Methodology to define the roadmap”. The roadmap itself is not promised for another year and the ministry is already late on its own schedule.
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Enel’s announcement that Windpeshi was up for sale caught most observers by surprise (including me). But the Minister and the President were silent. Maybe they already knew. Maybe they don’t care. Maybe this is the plan.
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Following on from last week’s Thursday Thought which critiqued President Gustavo Petro’s statement that Colombia could be “the Saudi Arabia of clean energy”, I found an article proving that no country could aspire to that distinction, at least concerning hydrogen.
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We recently reported President Gustavo Petro saying “Colombia can be the Saudi Arabia of clean energies.” To be sure, a bold and dramatic statement, but (as usual) he was long on big ideas and short on details. What would it mean to be “The Saudi Arabia of clean energy”? Could Colombia aspire to such a distinction?
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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.
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The Pavagada Ultra Mega Solar Park would cover most of the island of Manhattan and generates power for millions of families in India. Built on arid land once used for subsistence agriculture, the developers thought they had created a novel way for the local population to benefit. But it’s not enough.
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I’m in Canada for a few weeks and getting to spend time with Barrie and Laurie, my retired, environmentally conscious friends. I got an update on rooftop solar and we took day-long trip in their electric Hyundai Kona. The shape of things to come for Colombians.
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Most people who are not in the US like to compare themselves to the US. Colombians especially seem to view the northern giant as some sort of paradise where everything works that does not work at home. Not true for a variety of things but interesting to read recently about inadequate US charging infrastructure holding back electric vehicle penetration, the same complaint we have here.
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Last week I wrote about the success of community solar in Puerto Rico, concluding that Colombia had things to learn from the experience but the comparisons were not entirely fair. Sitting at my desk in Bogota, from the depressing depths of the worst La Niña phenomenon in a very long time, I need to get some objective support for whether solar makes any sense in the country outside of La Guajira and the Tatacoa desert.
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President Gustavo Petro says he wants to break the grip of the big electrical generators and use distributed solar so every Colombian community can generate its own energy. Puerto Rico lost most of its electrical system in Hurricane Maria and community solar was the only way to get up and running fast. Now, it seems like a permanent, perhaps better solution than Luma, the local utility company.
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Juan Pablo Ruiz Soto has climbed Mount Everest three times, reaching the summit twice. He is a consultant on environmental issues to the UN Development Program and a member of many boards including the Colombian branch of the World Wildlife Federation. His environmental credentials are impeccable, and he writes extensively on environmental issues especially for the national newspaper El Espectador. And (or perhaps ‘but’) he is an economist so he always writes from a rational, pragmatic, point of view. His most recent column concerns the growing number of internal combustion vehicles in Colombia and how to mitigate their impact on CO2.
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The so-called Paris accords committed the world to do whatever it took to limit the rise in global average temperatures to 1.5oC by 2100. The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)– a respected group of scientists – concludes that there is virtually no chance of achieving this result. This will carry humankind into uncharted waters.
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A year-ago January I wrote “The cheapest kilowatt hour” about global efforts for energy efficiency. This January I found an article in Revista Semana about using technology for energy transition. I’ve collected several relevant reports and articles since then. Greater economic output for less energy remains the goal.
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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.
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President Gustavo Petro has other problems this week so we have not heard much from his plan to set electricity rates PERSONALLY! Turns out European countries have the same problem of “too high” tariffs and are looking for better solutions than simply making arbitrary cuts. In the UK, some think that making public utilities into so-called “public benefit corporations” would solve the problem but I have my doubts.
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“…I cannot make bricks without clay!” Hard to make good investments decisions without information.
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Colombian President Gustavo Petro has been doing the rounds of multilateral organizations saying that countries, like his, which steward resources that mitigate climate change (like the Amazon rainforest) should have their debt forgiven. The reception has been tepid at best and we expressed skepticism. Now a study by the French central bank casts further doubt on the concept.
Read morePresident Gustavo Petro’s declaration that he personally would set utility rates has investors worried. Some industry associations and editorial writers say that investors will leave. However, it may not be as simple as charging off in a huff when the decrees are enacted or laws are passed.
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No Colombian over the age of about 30 needs to hear this story but the rest of us do. Non-Colombians trying to understand the country’s energy policy will especially benefit.
Read moreDespite this government’s seeming indifference to the topic, electric vehicles (EVs) will be an important contributor to Colombia’s energy transition. But EVs are currently expensive and this raises concerns about their viability in Emerging Markets (EMs). A recent World Bank study sheds light on the topic and has recommendations that Colombia could leverage.
Read moreRecently I found this report by consultant EY that looks at the current state of the art in renewable energy with a particular emphasis on decentralized: “Can decentralized energy get good enough, fast enough?”, the November 2022 version of an ongoing research project. The title clearly states the key question but EY somewhat dodges the answer although it concludes that an essential tool will be smart grids – a technology to optimize the energy flow in a network with multiple generation sources and, as always, a large number of users.
Read moreOK. That is a bit exaggerated. But 2023 is officially underway and most Colombians are back from vacation. The policy-making machine is restarting, and our first Thursday Thoughts of the new year looks at what we think they will be working on.
Read moreIn June I wrote an article about not leaping to apply “green solutions” arbitrarily to any given situation without thinking through whether the idea made any practical sense. That article dealt with biofuels and mixing hydrogen with natural gas. Now a similar argument has come up, about the practicalities of industrializing H2. Since hydrogen plays a key role in the Colombian government’s and State-owned Enterprise Ecopetrol’s energy transition plans, I thought the ideas were worth discussing.
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