At a Glance: Latin America’s rural power shortfall

Rural electrification is the principal challenge to fulfill the affordable and clean energy objective of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

That is according to a study released by the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Eclac) that looks at the transition to sustainable energy sources.

The coverage shortfall is particularly present in low- and medium-income countries such as Haiti, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Bolivia, Honduras, and El Salvador, highlights the document.

The analysis calls for “urgent” actions to promote decentralized generation and the expansion of distribution lines.

The Alliance for Rural Electrification argues that off-grid systems can reduce investment costs of achieving full electrification by up to 30%, are up to 50% cleaner than grid extension and are faster to deploy and more reliable.

The Eclac study does point to efforts to expand the use of clean gaseous fuels in rural areas.

BNamericas recently reported that Panama’s public services regulator Asep granted definitive licenses for small-scale, natural gas-fired plants in off-grid communities.

Read Small-scale LNG to serve Panama off-grid communities

The country’s 2020-30 energy transition strategy targets decentralization using small-scale renewable energies and storage for distributed generation, electromobility, energy efficiency, and digitization.

Other actions underway include Guatemala’s push to implement a rural electrification infrastructure program.

The government looks to secure up to US$120mn in multilateral funds to build medium voltage networks, including the implementation of remote metering and management systems.

In Costa Rica, state power company ICE aims to have nearly 5,000 photovoltaic systems in place by year-end as part of its rural electrification program.

Colombia’s mines and energy ministry in August announced investments of over 430bn pesos (US$112mn) for 50 municipal electrification initiatives in 2020.

And last week, the rural electrification department of Peru’s energy and mines ministry launched bidding to expand power distribution in Cajamarca region.

One of the recommendations following the evaluation of the Olade-led Sustainable Energy Access for the Latin America and Caribbean Region project was that “support for off-grid projects needs to provide adequate technical and financial support for rural communities in order to provide a degree of sustainability.”