On the road to zero emissions, the key to guarantee system stability and a continuous and quality energy service is the combination of different energies and a solid storage infrastructure. This was stated by Rolando González Bunster, president and CEO of InterEnergy Group, during his participation in the Mercado Energy Summit, organized by Revista Mercado.
From the central theme of his speech, « Leading the change towards zero emissions », González Bunster emphasized: « Our plan is to change oil for gas and move steadily towards renewables. The key is the perfect combination to guarantee the energy transition to which the world aspires ».
The path of this leading energy group, in its more than thirty years of history in the country, has been oriented towards the generation of an increasingly cleaner future; and that north, ever closer, has a name: CEPM Zero.
It was during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), held in Glasgow, in 2021, when the president of InterEnergy Group announced the plan to make CEPM a 100% renewable company by 2030, under the CEPM Zero initiative. « When I made this announcement I did not realize the complexity and magnitude of this project – confessed González Bunster – but this commitment is already a reality, and we are going to install 700 MW of renewable energy in CEPM’s concession area and another 100 outside this area. »
The challenge on this path, as the businessman indicated, is to overcome the intermittency of renewable energies, when the natural resource, be it wind, water or sun, is not available, for which it is necessary to create a storage infrastructure « sufficiently reliable and robust » to guarantee the stability of the system. « And that requires investment. Whoever thinks that renewable energy is cheap has to consider that for it to be reliable it must have many additives, » reminded the president of InterEnergy Group.
« Renewable energy represents in kW installed a significant percentage of the country’s generation, but not in kW produced, so you have to consider how to supplement renewable energy with enough batteries for that energy to operate the most hours per day, » he completed.
Accelerating a zero-emission future
In this sense, CEPM, as an isolated system, can guarantee this balance, determining the combination and investment needed to achieve this goal. « We want to make the eastern tourist area a zero emissions destination, from Casa de Campo to Miches, where tourists can travel with electric cars, charge them with solar energy, travel to Saona Island in the first electric catamaran in the country… That is our route, » explained González Bunster.
From this vision, Saona has since last December with a photovoltaic plant that provides clean energy to the more than 600 inhabitants of this island for the first time in its history, from a model of sustainability replicable in other parts of the world. This plan is part of the Sustainable Saona project, carried out in alliance with the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (MIMARENA) to make this destination, which receives more than 1 million tourists per year, a model at world level.
According to González Bunster, InterEnergy Group’s plans in the short term are ambitious for the zero-emissions future to which the group aspires, with a regional scope. In the near future, they are preparing the expansion of renewable assets in different parts of Latin America; in 2024 they will inaugurate in Panama the largest combined cycle plant in Central America and the Caribbean, in partnership with AES; in addition to the unstoppable expansion of Evergo with the largest and most sophisticated network of charging stations in the region, already present in more than a dozen countries.
Source: bavarodigital.net
