Why no more RECOPE?

This Recope release was published using machine translation.

We are facing a golden opportunity, affirms the president of RECOPE, Dr. Alejandro Muñoz Villalobos, to decide on what the desirable energy model for Costa Rica should be. That is why it challenges the country to stop making assumptions about RECOPE or to continue feeding prejudices, when what is required is to propose solutions in the face of climate change.

Detractors of the company use different phrases, epithets and insults to refer to this strategic and valuable State company, without considering that companies are not walls but people. There are also proposals to close RECOPE and deliver the infrastructure to the highest bidder, postponing the change and betting uselessly that any model of opening the monopoly will bring with it a significant reduction in prices, without presenting any study to prove it, only demonstrating the level of ignorance on the subject.

We appropriate the phrase "We do not want more RECOPE" and in a positive sense we affirm it, to give way to the necessary discussion that must seriously take place in the country about a new vision. The one that proposes to transcend the era of hydrocarbons in transport in general and industrial processes. That which integrates a national policy to develop a clean energy matrix, which promotes a resilient economy, with the participation of public and private companies in the energy sector and the governing body that is MINAE.

Since August 2018, a bill was delivered to the President of the Republic, where the change from RECOPE to ECOENA is proposed, in April 2019 the project enters the Environment Commission of the Legislative Assembly. There has been very little progress there, it was updated the previous year with the approval of a replacement text, which included improvements in accordance with the new relevant legislation. But the project has not yet been convened despite the importance of the issue.

For Dr. Muñoz, manager of this initiative, the country has already chosen not to refine more, it has also chosen to prohibit the exploration and exploitation of oil and has chosen to take care of nature, including human beings. In this logic, he points out that although there are groups that still propose oil exploitation or the introduction of natural gas, the world is moving in another direction, because it is rather seeking to evolve towards clean and renewable energies.

Therefore, he thinks that closing the company is not a solution, but rather that it is necessary to transform it; "RECOPE transformed into ECOENA could generate opportunities for SMEs and large companies, also for cooperatives and other sectors of the social and solidarity economy."

“There are many who are already working on promoting and venturing into other alternatives such as hydrogen, green fuels such as Green Jet and Green Diesel, synthetic fuels, biogas as a product of the application of plasma, for example. At RECOPE we have carried out studies that demonstrate the viability of an energy matrix in which for public and private transport, using for the next 20 years, a combination of low-emission and zero-emission fuel alternatives such as electric mobility and electric mobility. hydrogen, Costa Rica could eliminate 20.1% of greenhouse gases ”, explains the hierarch.

He concludes that “this project to convert RECOPE into ECOENA constitutes a serious basis to initiate the discussion, which we hope will be put on the table, in order to transcend the fossil era and give an opportunity to better public health, environmental quality and the dynamization of the economy. ”.