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>>Hi, good afternoon. My name is Mario Hardo. I'm a software engineer
here in the networking group at Google. I'm honored to introduce our speaker today. This
is part of a speaker's series we are trying to start called "Prospectivus" where we invite
Hispanics and Latinos that have worked in sciences and engineerings and in the IT industry,
and, so that they kind provide like mentoring at scale and share a little bit of their personal
story. But most importantly to share what they currently work on and the exciting technologies
they are invested. We have a great speaker today. He is the President
and CEO of GreenMomentum, which is a, the startup here in Silicon Valley that does market
intelligence for the creation and dissemination of the green industry throughout Mexico and
Latin America. He's also founder of an NGO, called Green
Impulse 2.0 that has a similar objective which is to promote the industry and the creation
of high end green jobs in Latin America. And he's also the Chairman of the Cleantech
Challenge for Latin America, which is a program that he probably will explain more about,
that is also aligned to strengthening and assimilating the upcoming opportunities.
And today to talk about Cleantech and the challenges and opportunities in Latin America,
let us welcome Luis Arguirre-Torres. [applause]
>>Luis Aguirre-Torres: Thank, Mario. Thank you everybody for, for being here and I'm
honored by the invitation. Mario asked me to, before I start, talk a
little bit about why I'm here and why I'm talking to you and why you should pay attention
or not to what I have to say today. Just the, the very quick version is, I, I'm
a, I'm Mexican. I was born in Mexico. I studied - I had my first degree in computer engineering
in Mexico. And then after that I went to study in England. I did a Master's and a Ph.D. in
electronic engineering in, in the University of London.
I worked in Europe for a few years, mostly in the telecomm industry. That's the way I
came to the U.S. I ended up coming here, working for AT&T in the telecomm industry, too.
It was then when I started just talkin' to startup companies - technology firms here
in Silicon Valley - and when I started thinking: "Well, I probably should go to Silicon Valley
because this is where, where everything happens." So I took the first opportunity I had, which
was to work with an Israeli company. To my surprise, the Israeli company hired me in
Silicon Valley, but then they sent me to Tel Aviv and then they sent me to Singapore.
So my dream of coming and working in Silicon Valley was really just to come and set up
a house here, because then I was all the time in Israel and Southeast Asia.
But then I, I, I started getting involved more in, in market development, business development
areas and, and then I got more interested in the type of business and the type of activities
that you could have in American markets; specifically, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and eventually
Latin America. At some point I started thinking actually,
I need to tell the truth here. My wife started telling me that I should do something important
with my life. And, you know, as anybody who's been married knows, we just do what the wife
says. And so I did that, and I moved to Cleantech. For me Cleantech was a way of doing my part.
What I wanted to do was to promote clean technology; promote ways of helping the environment. But
also a part that was really important for me and eventually became one of the most important
parts of the company, was to, to promote sustainability. And here I'm talking about sustainable development
in the sense that I want to promote a balance in, in technology development, the economy,
and society. I want to make sure that if we are for real -- migrating to a green economy
- from an oil economy to green economy - that we're gonna do it right and we're gonna
benefit also communities. And then being from Mexico, the company started
focusing on, on those communities that when you - that is Latin America. So eventually
we, with other partners here in Silicon Valley, we founded GreenMomentum.
GreenMomentum is a market intelligence firm focused on promoting and accelerating the
development of clean technology in Latin America. So this is the very long answer to a very
quick question that Mario had. And so I'm gonna take it from here and I'm
gonna start the presentation. Please feel free to ask any questions at any
point. I think it's better if we have a conversation, rather than you just looking at me and lookin'
at the slides. Right? So I should have shown this slide when I was
talking, because, you know, it's part of what I was gonna say, but also Mario mentioned
something and I wanna mention it very quickly here.
We also founded something that is called a Green Impulse, Impulsiva Verde - dos punto
cero -- 2.0. Basically, Impulsiva Verde, what it does,
it promotes green jobs. It promotes a creation of high quality green jobs for Latin America.
So this goes hand in hand with the objectives of GreenMomentum.
GreenMomentum is the for profit part of the organization. Impulsiva Verde is the non-profit
part of the organization. And together we, we work on different projects.
So, the idea of me coming here today was to talk about opportunities in the Cleantech
industry, mostly in Latin America. But to do this we need to first agree on what we're
talking about here. First we need to agree on what we mean by
cleantech. Cleantech, which refers to clean technologies, is a term that has been coined
by specifically a group called the Cleantech Group.
The Cleantech Group has been using this term for a while and it's a term that investors,
business use to refer to the industry that has knowledge based products and services
that are focused on improving performance, productivity, and mostly helping the environment
by eliminating CO2 emissions. There is another group consultancy firm called
Clean Edge that has a slightly different interpretation of what the word is, but at the end of the
day we're all talking about the same thing. We're talking about products and services
that can be used to eliminate CO2 emissions or harness renewal materials and energy sources.
The whole idea is to cut emissions and reduce waste.
[pause] When we talk about cleantech - and this happens
all the time - whenever we, we are in a conference, people get confused with sustainability, sustainable
development, cleantech - how it all relates. So I think it is also important to talk about
what sustainability means. Sustainability comes from Latin sustenere,
which means to endure; to persist. Basically, when we talk about sustainability we talk
about the ability of an ecosystem to survive, given the specific conditions throughout time.
Then there is the term of sustainable development. Sustainable development was properly defined
by the Brundtland Commission of the United Nations in 1997, which talks about the development
that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations.
Basically we're talking about intergeneration now equity, fear. Equity; equality? Sorry,
just get confused with the words. And then when we talk about sustainability
and sustainable development, it's what I was tryin' to, to explain at the beginning. We're
trying to find a balance between the, the development of technology; economic growth;
and society. We wanna make sure that everything is fair
in every sense. And if we manage to get that balance, that equilibrium, we find a point
in which we, we can grow and we can ensure the future of the next generation, the next
generations. So when we talk about sustainability according
to the United Nations Environment Program and the Worldwide Fund, we talk about improving
the quality of human life while living within the current capacity.
The current capacity of biological species in an environment is the, is the population
size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely.
So when we talk about current capacity, we're talking about how much can our planet support,
right? How much can we live? And, and it's very easy to see this in terms of food, in
terms of water, environmental conditions and living space.
So when we talk about this always the topic of population increase comes to mind.
So when we're talking about sustainable development, sustainability, we are talking about current
capacity and then we have to talk about population increase.
I, I know that Al Gore was here recently and, and he was talking about probably what he's
been talking about lately which is: climate change. And also what climate change has to
do with population growth and what it has to do with the future of our planet.
When we talk about the population increase, we, we can, we, we always focus on developing
countries. We always focus on the birth rate that has increased in, in countries like Mexico,
Latin America, China and India. Most of the increase has indeed come from,
from this part of the world - has apparently, according to a, I don't know the numbers by
heart - it has raised from 5.6 billion to 7.5 - well it will raise to 7.9 billion by
2050. So this, this presents a very important risk
for all of us, for the entire planet. If we continue to grow the way we're doing, if the
population continues to increase, particularly in developing countries like Latin America,
Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, we are gonna find ourselves in an ecological deficit.
And when we find ourselves in an ecological deficit -- that is the carrying capacity
-- cannot support the current growth of the population and meet the needs of the population,
then we need to start finding on sustainable ways of compensating.
And when we do this, we start looking at world trade which is probably the most common way
of, of trying to meet these unsustainable extra resources. But also we start relying
on, on things like fossil fuels which normally we talk about it as coming from the past,
because when we say coming from the future we're also talking about exploiting resources
that are not that are gonna disappear if we continue exploiting them the way we are.
So, in, in this, in this sense, we need to understand what the current capacity of the
world is today; what it has to do with the population growth; and what it has to do with
what we have to do from now on. So when I was, when I started talking about
this, I was, I was talking about cleantech and the relationship it has with sustainability,
with current capacity, and with population growth.
The relationship is directly related to consumption and directly related to the way we are gonna
consume the environmental resources in our planet.
This has led, according to many experts and scientists, has led to what is called "climate
change." And everybody's familiar at least with the term, but basically what it means
is that the current conditions of the environment given the amount of CO2 equivalent gases that
are in the atmosphere, have caused an increase in temperature in our planet.
According to scientists, if the temperature were to rise more than two centigrades within
the next several years, we'll have a catastrophic scenario for the world.
So here is where, where things get really interesting, right? So far, for the, in the
past 50 years temperature has increased point six degrees. And we're expecting that within
the next 40 years, temperature could increase two degrees, two centigrade, which means we're
gonna die, if that happens. So what we need to do, is we need to prevent
that from happening. We need to make sure that we do what we can to reduce the emissions
of, of greenhouse gases, that are the ones that will cause this increase in temperature.
So the way we do this, is by promoting the carbonization of the environment and the world.
And the way we do this, is by exploiting renewal energy sources and by doing that - in order
to do that - we need to develop what are called clean technologies.
So this was a very long way of going around, but this is the relationship - this is why
cleantech is important. It's not just a business opportunity. It has to do with our own survival
and the survival of the planet. [pause]
So now that we're talking about this still, everybody has heard about the Kyoto Protocol.
The Kyoto Protocol that was initially conceived in 1992 at the Earth Summit, but really signed
in Kyoto in 1997; was not ratified by the United States and China and other countries.
But a total of 189 countries, up until 2000, November 2005, signed to the Kyoto Protocol.
The Kyoto Protocol basically what it says is: we're gonna commit all together to reduce
emissions by 5.2 percent." The entire world is gonna get together and try to reduce emissions
by that amount. But that doesn't mean that everybody gonna reduce emissions in the same
amount. It just means that the ones that pollute more, are gonna have to reduce emissions more
than the ones that pollute less. And only 37 industrialized nations are committed
to do this. The rest of the world is doing it on a voluntary basis.
So the Kyoto Protocol is bound to expire. It's gonna expire in 2012, so what we're trying
to do right now is to get together - the whole world is trying to get together and come up
with a replacement - with a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, and this is expected,
was expected to happen in Copenhagen at the end of the year - actually starting Monday
next week. Right now things are not looking great. Things
are actually looking terrible, and we find ourselves in a situation where developing
countries are facing off developed countries and trying to agree on very specific things
such as: who's responsible for what's happened. And this is a very interesting argument, because
right now China is saying that they are responsible for the most emissions in the world. However,
they are still a developing country; their economy is still growing and nobody limited
the growth of the US when their economy was growing by limiting emissions.
So right now the debate is whether countries like China need to be subject to a binding
agreement with the rest of the world. And also at the same time we have the developing
countries - we have the poorest countries in the world - who are demanding financial
aid. And countries like the US are supposed to give them money. And, this is calculated
at about 100 billion dollars a year. So right now Europe, the US and all developed
nations are trying to agree with developing nations as to how much money they have to
give them for this. And when we talk about this - one of the points
that people are in disagreement right now - is how much do we have to reduce in terms
of emissions. We are talking about preventing an increase in temperature in the next 40
years. So we need to do this by reducing CO2 emissions.
So how much do we have to reduce? And right now the US, for example, is suggesting that
using 2005 as a base line, they are gonna reduce in 17 percent their emissions by 2020.
And countries like China are suggesting a reduction of 40 to 45 percent by 2050, also.
But none of these has been signed in any document; nobody has agreed yet on these.
But one of the things that normally happens is when I tell you that we're gonna reduce
50 million tons of CO2, it means little to most people, because most people have no idea
what that means. So very quickly, what is it when we say one
million tons of CO2 equivalent? We're talking about more than 170,000 passenger vehicles;
we're talking about 24 percent of the annual emissions released by coal burning power plants.
So, so for you to have an idea, we have - oh, actually the numbers are coming in in
a little bit so. When we talk about emissions, we can tell
based on the industrialization of each country, which are the largest polluters in the world.
And by looking at this map you can tell that the US and China are one and two. And then
comes India and Russia very close. If we look at the numbers specifically -
I don't know if you can, if you can see the numbers from there - but we can see that China,
the US and Europe as a block are, are the largest polluters in the world.
[pause] Except for China and the US, Europe and some
of the top ten polluters in the world, ratified the Kyoto Protocol. What that means is that
as a group, they decided in 1997 that they were gonna reduce their emissions. That they
were gonna try to reduce emissions and then different mechanisms were implemented and
they are called collectively the Clean Development Mechanisms, which are, were created for those
countries that pollute the most; those that are our top ten here except, as I said for
China, China and the US. These mechanisms were created so they could,
if not lower their emissions, pay for somebody else to lower their emissions, and in that
way balance off somehow the amount of emissions that they have.
In 2001, which is when enough quorum was gathered to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, it started a
very interesting thing in the world. People started investing in technology in order to
clean the world. They, people are started investing in what we call clean technologies.
And this, this was a question that I got in a conference very recently which is: "What
is the, the, the direct relation that we can find in this policy at the UN level, at the
federal government level, with the development of cleantechnology, of the development of
a whole industry? And here normally I, I answer with a very
clear example. And we're in California, and this is the best example that you can have.
California, the, the Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, basically passed in 2006 the Assembly Bill
32. AB 32 basically means, to put it simple, that
California needs to pollute less. That every industry in California needs to reduce their
emissions. That utility companies need to provide energy from renewal sources up to
20 percent. And recently, this year, with Executive Order 12, the Governor increased
this to 30 percent, basically asking all utility companies to produce energy from renewal energy
sources. This wasn't an option. This was law and because
of this law, companies started scrambling trying to meet these requirements. And what
happens? We're in California; we're in Silicon Valley; we're in the place where all the entrepreneurs
are thinking all the time what to do next. So they found an opportunity. Policy influenced
investment. Investment brought new innovation and technology and a new industry was created.
Based on AB 32 a whole new industry in Silicon Valley was created and since last year when
the little financial crisis started, the only place that had a negative unemployment in
cleantech, was Silicon Valley. Basically, when we're talking about California,
we can translate this into a whole country. Right? California is arguably the fifth economy
of the world. So basically, what happened in California
could happen at the country level in the US and China and many other places. And this
happened. When …
[pause] As I was saying after 2001 when countries
started trying to find ways of cleaning the environment, of developing renewal energy,
things had started to move in the, the investment community.
So if we look at how much money was invested in cleantechnology -according to the United
Nations Environment Program on New Energy Finance, about 155 billion dollars were invested
in 2008. This includes assets financing; it includes direct investment from venture capital
firms; and this includes financing for new energy sources in developing and developed
countries. The, the amount of, of investment was divided
in basically four key technologies, and then all the rest, to put it somehow.
So is this too small? Can you read, or should I read it for you?
[pause] I guess it's, it's okay?
Well, last year solar got the bigger, the biggest piece of the pie with 5.5 billion
dollars. Most of the investment went to Europe and the US and about 30 percent of that investment
in solar came to specifically Silicon Valley. Biofuel and wind also got investment from
business firms and then efficiency and infrastructure for electric vehicles and battery.
2009 presented a very interesting change, because up until this point, biotechnology
was number one industry in terms of investment. On the, in the third quarter of 2009, it was
cleantech for the very first time that took the first, the top spot.
Biotech was second to cleantech in terms of investment. This granted, happened because
of the stimulus package. Obama devoted a lot of money to, to promoting the smart grid and
to promote renewal energy sources. So that's why a lot of the investment came this way.
But this has created some momentum and it is expected to continue. Maybe biotech and
cleantech are gonna continue playing both for the, for the top spot, but basically cleantech
has gained enough momentum to stay and continue increasing in terms of investment.
In terms of asset financing, we can see that wind took the first spot. Wind technology
and wind farms in the US and in Europe started growing. In Europe we have the largest number
of wind farms and here in the US we have - and actually this is a very interesting
thing because I think Germany is the number one country in terms of installed capacity
for wind farms - but the US is the number one in terms of production. So the efficiency
of the wind farms in the US is much greater than in other places.
Also, off shore wind farms which were only available in Europe, now they're being developed
here in the US. They are talking about operating the, the Great Lakes, are talking about a
project in Maine. And other countries like Australia and also in the southern hemisphere,
other countries are developing off shore wind farms.
So, in terms of where the money went: this is a - the information here is, is very interesting
to put it somehow. At the World Environment Day in June, the Undersecretary for the United
Nations, also Director of the UN Environment Program, Achim Steiner, was presenting this
report where they were saying that 155 billion dollars were invested in clean technologies
worldwide. And he said that approximately 25 percent
of that went to developing countries. This was not necessarily right. If you look at
the, at the report, developing countries took about 15 percent of the investment at the
end. But from the amount of money that went to
developing countries, half of it went to China and the other half went almost entirely to
Latin America. So the, the translation of the numbers that
appear in this report is very interesting; the way it's worded. It's kind of confusing
if you ever look at this report, but at the end of the day, what was discussed at the
World Environment Day was that a lot of the money is coming finally to emerging countries.
It is - people believe that, that the develop, the developed nations are reaching a point
of saturation in some sectors such as solar, and beginning to reach saturation in other
areas such as wind. And developing countries are benefiting from this.
So we were talking about carbon emissions by region and by country, and if we look at
this also from electricity consumption, we can see that there is a direct correlation.
The top 15 countries would be the same. We're talking about countries with the highest
population also are the countries that require the most energy and required to produce the
most energy. This is also related to population density.
If we look at emerging markets, if we look at developing countries such as China or we
look at Latin America, we can see that these are the poster child for population density.
The largest cities in the world are in developing countries, and this is directly related to
energy consumption, energy production and CO2 emissions.
So if we look at the world in terms of population, we, we can start trying to identify where
the opportunities will come at the end of the day. If we manage to relate population
growth, population density, energy consumption, CO2 emissions, we are also trying to find
opportunities to invest in clean technologies. So we can see from here that China, India,
the US, Brazil and Mexico are some of the top countries in terms of population. But
a very interesting way of looking at this is, what's gonna happen in the future?
In 19, I think it is 1946, only 1.6% of the world's population was living in urban areas.
Now it is 47 percent. So in the last 50 years, most of the world has moved into the big cities.
And this has happened mostly in developing countries.
Right now if we - this is a logarithmic graph so it's not entirely evident - but you can
tell that Africa and Latin America are increasing in terms of population and they are projected
to increase at a higher rate than most regions in the world.
So if we put one and one together, we can start looking at this as an opportunity. We
can start looking at this as an opportunity for an industry that is being developed to
clean the environment; to mitigate the effects that CO2 emissions are having on the environment.
So going specifically to Latin America, Latin America has 569 million people in 20 countries.
We are not counting 10 dependencies or whatever they are called, different departments.
The largest cities in Latin America are really in, in the top countries. They are in Mexico,
they are in Brazil, they are in Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Colombia and Peru.
These are the countries that coincidentally are investing right now in clean technologies.
They are the countries that are trying to promote the use of renewal energy and a way
of mitigating CO2 emissions. So this is probably difficult to see, but
we're talking about CO2 emissions per capita, and if you could see the numbers on the screen
you would see that Mexico, Brazil and Argentina have the highest number of CO2 emissions per
capita. Which the reason it's next to the population is because it's coincidental that
those three countries also have the highest population density.
So let's start talking about Mexico. Mexico has – and this is debatable - more than
110 million people living there. They say about 20 percent of them live in the capital
city. It has a GDP of 1.5 trillion dollars. This is a very interesting figure because
I don't know if you have followed the news, but China said that they're gonna invest in
clean technologies between now and 2020, one trillion dollars.
Basically, two-thirds of Mexico's GDP is gonna go to clean technology. Imagine if that were
to happen in Latin America; we were to invest that amount of money in developing clean technologies.
Mexico is responsible for 1.6 percent of the world's emissions. But right now, now that
we're going to Copenhagen, President Calderon from Mexico, he's very active in, in promoting
the negotiation between developing countries and developed countries - he's promoting something
called the Green Fund. This Green Fund is a fund that is to be created
to help developing countries to finance the fight against climate change. In order to
do this, and to show that Mexico is for real, he has pledged - and he was widely criticized
in the country for doing this without asking first - that they're gonna reduce emissions
by 50 percent. That is they're gonna bring it down from 425 from 1990 levels to 212 million
tons of CO2. This is, as you can see, equivalent to removing
37 million passenger vehicles from the streets in Mexico. A country that has 50 million cars,
wants to reduce between now and 2050 emissions which are equivalent to removing 60 percent
of the cars that are in the streets right now.
This is an impossible situation if we were to do it just by removing vehicles or shutting
down factories. So basically the President is promoting a, a number of projects, a number
of different programs to promote the development of clean technologies.
And right now, so far Mexico is a country that is bringing the largest number of projects
to Copenhagen. Next week they're gonna start negotiating and one of the main points of
the negotiation is the Green Fund that Mexico is proposing.
Mexico is also committing to use approximately .56 percent of the GDP to fight climate change.
And this does not include direct investment and public/private partnerships to develop
cleantechnology projects. So it is estimated that between now and 2020, Mexico is going
to invest close to 1.5 percent of the GDP in, in climate change.
And when we, there is a study that shows that if we were not to do anything right now -
it's the cost of not doing anything right now - could be much higher by 2020 and much
more even in 2050. So right now if a country uses 1.5 percent
of the GDP, it's gonna be less than half of what we will need to use in 2020 to fight
climate change. So that's the reason Mexico is proposing to use that amount.
Mexico has also joined - they were the first Latin American country to join the IRENA,
which is the Renewable Energy Agency. And this was done basically because Mexico is
also committing to develop clean technologies, commit to develop renewal energy sources.
And here this is a very interesting thing, because Mexico's a country that lives from
oil, basically. PEMEX is the largest company in Mexico. The second one is the monopoly
the Federal Electricity Commission. And these two rely on fossil fuels to bring money to
Mexico. And even then, the country is promoting the use of renewal energy.
They are getting help, they are getting help from The World Bank. They are getting help
from USTDA, US aide, and there is a lot of investment going to Mexico to develop clean
technologies. So right now the government and - I apologize
this slide is in Spanish - but basically what the government is saying right now is, right
now we have 3.3 percent of the energy being produced from conven - renewal energy - and
they're expecting that in the next five years they're gonna bring it to 7.6 percent. They
are gonna develop new wind energy projects biomass projects for energy generation. And
they're gonna start promoting the use of solar power at the residential level at this point.
So when we're talking about opportunities in Mexico in the cleantech industry, we can
always talk about the very large wind farms. Mexico has one of the best regions in terms
of wind conditions for wind farms. It is in Oaxaca, a placed called the Isthmus of Tehauntepec,
and it is where most of the wind farm projects are being developed in Mexico.
Also, in Baja, California there is another place called La Rumorosa.
And most of the European companies are coming to that part to develop wind farms, but this
has created a big industry. An industry for wind turbines, for blades, for transporting
these and installing them and it's creating new jobs.
Also talking about what the government is doing; the government is promoting the use
of solar power. Wal-Mart is one of the first retailers who is installing solar, solar panels
on the roof of all their stores. Wal-Mart has about 110 stores in Mexico and they're
saying that at least 75 percent of them are gonna have solar panels.
So basically this is creating a huge opportunity for distributors of solar panels, for people
who are installing, and when I was talking about this at the beginning, I said that there
is a non-profit organization that is in charge of promoting the creation of high quality
green jobs in Mexico. We are trying to retrain the work force in
Mexico from building televisions at the border with the US, to start building solar panels;
to learn how to install solar panels. So this is a business opportunity for companies that
are in this area, but also an opportunity for a work force or - and for Mexico to promote
economic growth. Another aspect that is, is growing in Mexico
is, is the use of hybrid vehicles and right now Mexico City, the largest city in Mexico,
is promoting the use of electric vehicles. And this is a very interesting development,
once again, because we are talking about a country that lives on oil. We're talking about
a country that wants to live on oil for as long as possible. However, they have the,
enough vision to promote the use of electric vehicles. This is, it's a long way before
it happens, but it's, there, the first step in the right direction.
So right now there are many Chinese companies trying to enter Mexico. There are many opportunities
in terms of electric vehicles and not only electric vehicles, but batteries and infrastructure
for electric vehicles. So this is just a number of projects of, wind
projects that are being developed in Mexico. It's a total of 27, I believe, and most of
them are being developed by independent producers in - I think the translation would be like
- self supply type of agreement. Because in Mexico - and we're talking about
challenges and opportunities - one of the challenges in Mexico, is to get over ourselves,
to be honest. And basically dealing with the electricity monopoly which is the Federal
Electricity Commission. So right now it's illegal to sell electricity in Mexico if you
are not the Ce Fe, but there are ways of generating and selling the electricity if you're defined
for example a self supply project; which is what companies like Semex, the largest demand
company in Mexico and the third largest in the world. They created, they built a wind
farm and they are feeding energy to other plants from the wind farm in Oaxaca.
So in terms of solar power, Mexico is in, in one of the best areas in terms of solar
radiation. Specifically, the desert in the North is a perfect place for solar farms.
Solar farms are still difficult - large scale solar products in Mexico - are not there yet
because of a lack of regulation at this point. But residential solar is a new market that
is opening. So right now solar is limited just to residential and industrial installations,
but it is expected to change. And companies like San - Sanyo, I don't know how you pronounce
it in English it has opened a 50 megawatt plant in Mexico and they are committed with
the Mexican government to not only produce solar panels for the US, but also to Mexico
and Latin America starting 2011. So right now Mexico is part of the top 15
countries in terms of solar developments. Mostly thermal solar it's not so much for
photovoltaic. Right now we're talking about concentrating around water heater industry.
But these are very large industry and the government finally is giving incentives. So
if you have a new construction you can install solar heaters and then you get incentives
in terms of taxes. It's basically creating a brand new opportunity.
So we'll continue talking about countries and I'm gonna try to go faster here because
I know we're running out of time. We need to talk about Brazil. Brazil is the
largest economy in Latin America. It has a population of 192 million and 1.9 trillion
in terms of GDP. Brazil recently pledged a reduction of 40
percent by 2020. You see 1990 as the baseline. And as you can see, this occurs in removing
14 million passenger vehicles. So right now the only two countries that have
pledged in Latin America are Mexico and Brazil, but they are basically committed to reduce
emissions in an important way and set an example for the rest of Latin America.
Brazil is a country also that lives on oil. This is a country that has Petrobras, one
of the largest oil companies in the world. And they just recently found themselves in
a nice predicament, because they found a lot of oil. This is a country that has been promoting
biofuel for the, for the past 15, 20 years and suddenly they find incredible amounts
of oil. So what's gonna happen? Right now, the President,
Lula Da Silva, is basically saying that they are gonna continue to promoting the biofuel
industry. They're gonna continue promoting investment biofuel.
Brazil is number two producer and number one exporter of biofuel in the world. They are
doing the same thing right now with biodiesel. They are trying to promote biodiesel in the
country and by doing that they are also promoting new opportunities for the sugar mills. They
are promoting opportunities for them to enter into co-generation contracts for producing
electricity based on the bagasse of, of the sugar cane.
So right now in terms of Brazil and ethanol production, Brazil is, as I said, the number
two in the world, number one exporter. But the very interesting data here is the amount
of renewal energy that is coming from the ethanol industry; from cogeneration plants
and this is growing. As you saw before, about 50 percent of the
cars are using ethanol in Brazil; 97 percent of the cars in Brazil are equipped to handle
ethanol; and also in terms of cogeneration, about half of the generation of electricity
in some areas in Brazil is coming from the sugar mills.
So this is presenting great opportunities, great opportunities for car manufacturers;
also the distribution of biofuel, the distribution of ethanol and the distribution of biodiesel,
has become a great industry in Brazil. But this is not the only industry growing
in Brazil that, that has opportunities. Also in terms of wind generation, Brazil is number
one in Latin America in terms of wind power generation, followed by Mexico and, and Chile.
Right now according to the Latin American Wind Energy Association, Brazil has potential
for close to - well according to them - close to 10 gigawatts by 2020. So this is a very
large amount; enough to, enough to generate one-third of Brazil's energy needs.
So if we continue talking about opportunities - I mean we see that Mexico has opportunities
in terms of biofuel, wind, solar power; Brazil is mostly biofuel, but also wind.
And in Chile - Chile is a very interesting country. It's a country that is not in the
top 20 polluters in the world, but it's a country that's trying to do something right
now. They stumbled upon a gold mine. They basically stumbled upon, upon, a great gold
mine, which is lithium. Right now electric vehicles, and laptops and Ipods and everybody
is using lithium ion batteries. Lithium can be found in the US, in China,
Australia, Chile and Bolivia. But Chile and Bolivia have the largest reserves of lithium.
And the very interesting thing is that nobody, and I mean nobody, is exploiting it right
now. They basically don't have the money to exploit it. Right now you have Korean companies,
Chinese companies trying to enter into Bolivia and Chile and try to exploit lithium.
So this has created a new industry. Battery makers are moving to these regions of the
world and they're entering into contracts with the government to develop this new industry.
So lithium is, it's a gold mine that basically became recently a priority for both the, the
Chilean and the Bolivian governments. But also Chile is doing a lot. Chile has a
project right now in the Atacama Desert. The Atacama Desert is, is, - have you heard of
the sub-Saharan Solar Project? They are doing the same thing in, in the Atacama Desert.
They are trying to develop the largest solar farm in Latin America and they are trying,
they are gonna use the energy produced by this solar farm to bring water to the major
cities. So they are trying to fix two problems at
the same time. It is very interesting project, it's a project that's gonna cost a lot of
money and right now Chile is getting help from the InterAmerican Development Bank, from
US aid, in order to develop these projects. And most recently this week the wind farm
Carnella II, began operations in Chile. Which also was a milestone for them. The second
wind farm. And this, Chile is one of the largest copper
producers in the world. Each one of the mining companies is developing or building wind power
plants for their own needs. And this has created also a big industry. Right now, in terms of,
in terms of industry, the wind industry in Chile is the one that is growing at the fastest
rate in the whole of Latin America. [pause]
Okay. So as I was - I think I skipped this one.
Right now, as I was saying, in terms of what Bolivia is trying to do with the lithium,
they estimate that they need about 800 million dollars to exploit the resource. And this
is a very interesting thing, because they basically don't have the money and right now
they don't have anybody to give them the money. So they are hoping to get help from the US
specifically, which is a funny thing when you think about the type of environment they
have to exploit the resource. So the other countries are, are Argentina,
Colombia and Peru and Argentina is just starting. Argentina's just waking up and trying to get
into the cleantech industry too. They, in Buenos Aires right now, they have
some incentive programs which are really small, which are not really enough to start a brand
new industry, but it is expected to change after Copenhagen.
It is expected that Argentina will pledge emissions reductions and for the same reason
it will start developing a brand new industry. Same thing we can say about Peru and Colombia.
Both of them are developing - in the case of Colombia - a new ethanol industry. The
government is providing incentives to the sugar mills in order to start producing ethanol
and to start generating electricity with the bagasse, with the leftovers of the sugar cane.
And at the same time Peru is doing the same thing with biomass. Peru is going to the forest,
getting forest residues to start producing energy at the same time. And they are also
trying to develop the first wind farm in the country.
So right now these are the countries that are investing the most and they are trying
to create a brand new industry. If we, if we look at Latin America as a whole,
we can see that there are specific opportunities in biofuel, solar, wind, biomass and electric
vehicles in each one of the countries. Mexico and Brazil are probably the most promising
in terms of, in terms of these sectors and they've grown in these sectors, but also Chile,
Bolivia, Peru and Colombia present important opportunities.
So right now, it is expected that Latin America as a whole, in terms of cleantech, could be
five percent of the total global market which is estimated at around 1.7 trillion by 2018
and 20 trillion by 2030. So, right now the opportunities are - really
go hand in hand with what countries have to do to meet an emissions reduction target.
So right now Latin America presents an important opportunity for investors. Many private funds
are opening; multi-lateral funds are also starting to work with the governments there
to promote a brand new industry in cleantech. I think with this, I finish the presentation.
I don't know if you have any questions or would you like to talk about anything in particular?
[pause] [talking in background]
>>Q: I have a question about transmissions. So you mentioned the large scale solar project
in the Atacama, among others, that are really remote locations, and I'm wondering how they're
addressing the issues of transmission. >>Luis Aguirre-Torres: I couldn't hear the
last one. >>Q: I'm wondering how they're addressing
issues of transmission. Getting that power to where it needs to be from the middle of
nowhere. >>Luis Aguirre-Torres: Yes. In every case,
if we're talking about Latin America, there is an infrastructure problem when we're talking
about transmission lines. Normally European companies in Mexico, for example, they have
developed the, the part of the transmission line that needs to be built in order to connect
the wind farms or solar farms. And the same thing is happening in the Atacama
Desert. They have to build brand new transmission lines and interconnection sites everywhere.
A big bulk of the cost of the entire project goes to the construction of the infrastructure
around the solar farm precisely. >>Q: One question. What is being done about
those big dumpsters that are outside the big cities where a lot of the poorest population
make a living by getting recycled items? >>Luis Aguirre-Torres: Yeah. That is a business
opportunity that I didn't mention, that I probably should have. There are a lot of biogas
projects - when we're talking about landfills like the ones outside Mexico City, for example.
There are a couple of German companies that have come to Mexico that are trying to make
deals with the most important city governments in Mexico to create biogas plants.
So they are trying to address that problem at the same time they address the problem
of electricity generation and it is the same thing for Buenos Aires, as far as I know,
Bogota, Mexico City and Santiago. >>Q: So I noticed that nuclear was a very
small slice in some of the displays you had. Is there any consideration being given to
expanding nuclear, particularly next generation nuclear plants that are less polluting and
less risky? >>Luis Aguirre-Torres: In Latin America or
in general? [laughs] >>Q: Either one, if you want to address.
>>Luis Aguirre-Torres: Well in, the quick one is in Latin America there is no consideration.
There is, nuclear energy is not the most popular, affordable way of producing energy.
In Latin America there are nuclear plants, but I don't think there is going to be new
developments in that sense. And in terms of worldwide - there is this
eternal debate among people who work in cleantechnology, whether nuclear is something that we can consider
clean in any way. Most people, and I include myself there, do not consider it because of
the waste that it produces. So I know that there are developments. I don't
know enough to talk about them. And I know that here in the US, part of the climate legislation
wants to talk about the development of the nuclear industry in the US.
But that's as far as I know. [pause]
Anybody else? Well, thank you very much.
[applause] [techno music]