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View of the solar park in the municipality of Escobar, located an hour's drive from Buenos Aires. Inaugurated this month, it is the first municipally financed and managed solar energy project, at a time when private investment has withdrawn from large clean energy projects in Argentina. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Jul 18 2022 (IPS)

The multitude of solar panels stands out along a dirt road in an unpopulated area. Although located just an hour’s drive from Buenos Aires, the new solar park in the municipality of Escobar is in a place of silence and solitude, symbolic of the difficulties faced by renewable energies in making inroads in Argentina.

The Escobar plant, inaugurated this month, is the first solar energy park with municipal investment and management, at a time when private initiative has practically withdrawn from clean energy projects in this South American country of 47 million people, which has been in the grip of a deep economic and financial crisis for years.

“There are 3,700 photovoltaic solar panels that produce electricity to be sold to one of the electric cooperatives that distributes power in the area. With this plant, we seek to position ourselves as a sustainable municipality and access financing for new projects,” Victoria Bandín, director of Innovation in the Municipality of Escobar, told IPS during a tour of the grounds of the six-hectare park.

Located 50 kilometers from the Argentine capital, to which it is connected by a freeway, Escobar is a municipality on the northern edge of Greater Buenos Aires, a gigantic metropolitan area of 15 million inhabitants where the country’s greatest wealth and poverty live side by side.

Escobar’s extensive green areas have attracted thousands of families in recent years seeking to get away from the cement and noise of Buenos Aires, which has fuelled the construction of dozens of upscale high-security private housing developments.

Escobar is also home to a large community of Bolivian immigrants, who play a key role in the production of fruits and vegetables. In fact, the fresh food market that supplies the stores of several municipalities in the area bears the name “Bolivian Community”.

Next to the market, which is very close to the solar park, the white, inflated tarp of a biodigester, in which the market’s organic waste is processed, stands out.

Eliseo Acchura is about to send spoiled food discarded by stallholders to the biodigester at Escobar’s fruit and vegetable market. The biodigester, operating since last year, produces biogas that is then converted into electricity used in the market. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

“I pick up almost a ton of fruit and vegetables per day that the stallholders discard, and after 40 to 60 days of decomposition in the biodigester, we have biogas,” Eliseo Acchura, who works on the project inaugurated last year with support from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), told IPS.

The biogas is used to generate electricity to supply part of the market.

“We have rural areas and we seek to preserve ourselves as a green place on the edge of the great gray blob that is the greater metropolitan area,” Guillermo Bochatón, coordinator of the Sustainable Escobar program, which is carrying out several environmental initiatives, told IPS.

The rise and fall of renewables

Clean energies experienced a boom in Argentina starting in 2016, thanks to the Renovar Program, which managed to attract domestic and foreign private investors.

Through this program, the national government guaranteed the purchase of electricity for 20 years at a fixed rate in dollars and created a guaranty fund with the participation of international credit institutions to guarantee payment.

The share of renewable sources in the total electricity mix, almost non-existent in 2015, grew significantly since 2016, reaching a record high of 13 percent on average in 2021.

Today, Argentina’s electricity system has an installed capacity of almost 43,000 MW, of which 5,175 MW are renewable. The main source of generation is thermal (powered by natural gas and, to a lesser extent, oil) making up 59 percent of the total, followed by large hydroelectric projects, which make up 25 percent (only hydroelectric projects of less than 50 MW are considered renewable).

Among renewables, the largest share last year came from wind (74 percent), followed by solar (13 percent), small hydro (7 percent) and bioenergies, according to official data

Of the 189 renewable energy projects in operation, 133 were commissioned over the last four years.

The biodigester at Escobar’s wholesale fruit market was inaugurated last year and is part of the environmentally friendly initiatives launched in this municipality near the Argentine capital. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Clean energies today face two major problems in this country, according to Marcelo Alvarez, a member of the board of directors of the Argentine Chamber of Renewable Energies (CADER).

One has to do with infrastructure due to the saturation of the electricity transmission networks that deliver electric power to large cities. Another is the lack of financing, as a result of the macroeconomic conditions in the country.

“Even private ventures in distributed generation today are practically reserved only for environmental activists, because the lack of financing and extremely low electricity rates make them unprofitable,” Alvarez explained.

He said that the way things are going, the country is not likely to meet the goal set by law in 2015, for 20 percent of the national electricity mix to come from domestic sources by 2025.

“From a technical point of view, Argentina’s potential for renewable energies is enormous, because it has the necessary natural resources. And economically too, because in the medium term the costs of electricity production will fall,” Gabriel Blanco, a specialist in renewable energies from the National University of the Center of the Province of Buenos Aires (UNICEN), told Ecoamericas.

“The main obstacle is that there is no political will, because the decision is to bet on the energy business of fossil fuels, large hydroelectric and nuclear power plants,” he added.

The Escobar solar park has an installed capacity of 2.3 MW and required an investment of some two million dollars, which will be recovered with the sale of electricity within seven years, said the mayor of Escobar, Ariel Sujarchuk. “Between 23 and 53 more years of useful life of pure profit will be left after that,” he added.

The inauguration was also attended by Environment Minister Juan Cabandié, who pledged more than 1.7 million dollars in government funds for the expansion of the solar park, which has a large piece of land available for the installation of more panels.

In his speech in Escobar, Cabandié criticized industrialized countries for failing to comply with the financing needed to transform the economies of developing countries, as pledged under the Paris Agreement on climate change, adopted in the French capital in 2015.

The minister said that “the sector responsible for damaging the planet is in the Northern, not the Southern, hemisphere,” and argued that it is the countries of the North that must assume “the responsibility of financing the transition to sustainability of the countries of the South.”

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Trafic d'armes : sur la piste du Coyote, des Balkans à la Syrie
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Canada on Sunday sent a repaired turbine of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany by plane, Reuters reported on Monday. Russian energy giant Gazprom had asked Germany for the repaired turbine to restart gas flows, but it may still take five to seven days to reach Russia, according to the Russian newspaper Kommersant. Canada was slammed by Ukraine for granting the turbine an exemption from sanctions imposed on Russia.

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Macédoine du Nord : Von der Leyen presse Skopje d'accepter la proposition française
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Europa Kompakt ist EURACTIVs morgendlicher Newsletter. Sie können ihn hier abonnieren.

Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky fired the chief of the country's national security agency, the SBU, Ivan Bakanov, and the state prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, citing close ties with Russia, Reuters reported on Sunday. The firings and the appointment of Oleksiy Symonenko as the new prosecutor general were announced in executive orders on the president's website. In a Telegram post, Zelenskiy said there are 651 cases of alleged treason under investigation.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson has come under fire for missing an emergency ministerial meeting on heatwave preparedness on Saturday, DW reported. Johnson, who is set to step down in September, took a weekend break at his country retreat where he was also hosting a farewell party. Temperatures are expected to reach 40 degrees Celsius in England this week, which has triggered the country's first-ever "red" extreme heat warning.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen will visit Baku on Monday in a bid to seal a gas export deal, Reuters reported. "Amid Russia's continued weaponisation of its energy supplies, diversification of our energy imports is a priority," the commission tweeted. The bilateral deal aims to increase exports to the bloc, via the Southern Gas Corridor, with at least 20 billion cubic metres of gas annually by 2027.

Huge wildfires in countries including Spain, Portugal, Greece and France have forced national authorities to evacuate thousands of people from their homes, as a heatwave of record-breaking temperatures hits southern Europe. About 16,000 people were evacuated in France on Saturday. Meanwhile, the nearly week-long heatwave has already killed at least 360 people in Spain and 238 people in Portugal, Reuters reported. Britain will also reach record temperatures this week.

Citizens often turn to the European Parliament to ask how the Parliament responds to the issue of forest fires and what actions the European Union can take.

In recent years, several countries around the world have been confronted with particularly intense and widespread forest fires. In 2021, forest fires severely affected California, Turkey and Mexico, in addition to yearly European hotspots, such as the Mediterranean. 

The protection of forests in the European Union (EU) falls primarily under the national competence of the governments of EU countries. There are a number of ways, however, in which the EU contributes to preventing and helping in the case of forest fires, both through EU funding and EU mechanisms.

The European Parliament has repeatedly called on the European Commission and EU countries to do more to protect forests. The Commission has introduced protection mechanisms and a forest strategy for 2030.

European Parliament demands for better protection of forests

Recognising forests’ key role in climate action, the European Parliament has adopted several resolutions concerning the conservation of forests.

• In a resolution of September 2018, Parliament highlighted that sustainable and inclusive forest management and responsible use of forest commodities constitute the most effective and cheapest natural system for carbon capture and storage.
• In a resolution of January 2020, on the European Green Deal, Parliament called on the Commission to ‘present a new, ambitious EU forest strategy to give appropriate recognition to the important, multifunctional and cross-cutting role that European forests, the sector, and sustainable forest management have in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss’.
• In a resolution of September 2020, on the EU’s role in protecting and restoring the world’s forests, Parliament urged the EU and EU countries to recognise that the protection of native forests provides an outstanding climate mitigation benefit, and to restart the negotiations for an international forest convention.
• In a resolution of June 2021, Parliament welcomed the new EU forest strategy and underlined the importance of strengthening sustainable forest management.

EU plans to protect forests

A 2019 European Commission communication lays out actions to protect and restore forests outside the EU. Primary forests require special attention as they are unique and irreplaceable, have high carbon stocks, unique ecological features, and protect biodiversity. The EU aims to work in partnership with producer countries to reduce pressures on forests and to strengthen international cooperation to halt deforestation and forest degradation.

Regarding forests inside the EU, a 2021 European Commission communication (known as the ‘new EU forest strategy for 2030’) pursues the biodiversity and climate neutrality objectives enshrined in the European Green Deal and the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030. The strategy aims to improve the quantity and quality of EU forests by, for instance:

• providing education and training for people working in forest-based industries and making these industries more attractive to young people;
• promoting sustainable forest management;
• improving the size and biodiversity of forests, including planting three billion new trees by 2030;
• developing a strong research and innovation agenda to improve our knowledge on forests.

EU action to fight forest fires

The European Union actively supports forest fire prevention projects through its Regional Development Fund. Furthermore, the European Union Solidary Fund provides support to help EU countries tackle major natural disasters such as forest fires.

The European Union Civil Protection Mechanism ensures the rapid deployment of resources and personnel to any country in the world that requests assistance during crises such as forest fires. At the core of this mechanism is the Emergency Response Coordination Centre, which monitors forest fire risks and emergencies across Europe. This centre is supported by national and European monitoring services, including the European Forest Fire Information System.

In 2019, to strengthen the mechanism, the EU established a new European reserve of capacities. Known as rescEU, it includes firefighting planes and helicopters. For the 2022 forest fire season, Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Spain and Sweden put a total of 12 firefighting planes and 1  helicopter at the disposal of other EU countries in case of an emergency. The European Commission will decide jointly with these EU countries on the deployment of the planes and helicopter.

Further information

• New EU forest strategy for 2030, European Parliamentary Research Service, At a Glance Note, February 2022
• Forest fires: Environmental stakes, European Parliamentary Research Service, Briefing, November 2020
• Legislation on protecting the EU’s forests against fire, European Commission
• Forest Fires, European Commission, Fact Sheet, June 2022

Keep sending your questions to the Citizens’ Enquiries Unit (Ask EP)! We reply in the EU language that you use to write to us.

Germany is advocating for a stronger geopolitical European Union in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The EU can no longer afford "selfish blockades of European decisions by individual member states," German chancellor Olaf Scholz said, in an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Sunday. He was referring to the need to abolish national vetos in the EU Council and find common ground on divisive issues like migration.

Bei einem Besuch in der Ostslowakei um die Verwendung der EU-Kohäsionsfonds zur Integration der Roma in die Gesellschaft zu bewerten, bezeichnete eine Delegation von EU-Abgeordneten die Lebensbedingungen der Roma-Gemeinschaften als "beschämend".

Die diplomatischen Beziehungen zwischen Kroatien und Serbien haben sich am Sonntag rapide verschlechtert. Hintergrund ist Zagrebs Verbot eines nach serbischen Angaben privaten Besuchs von Präsident Aleksandar Vučić an der Stätte eines berüchtigten Konzentrationslagers aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg in Kroatien.

Une alerte canicule de niveau 3 (sur 4) commence à partir de ce lundi midi en Suisse romande. Ailleurs en Europe, la chaleur sévit également, provoquant de nombreux incendies. Suivez les principales informations sur ce brûlant été.

The nationalisation of French energy giant EDF was "inevitable" because of the "huge amount of regulatory and economic constraints" put on the company as well as France's new ambitious nuclear programme, according to Professor Jean-Michel Gauthier.

Tschechien hat seine sechsmonatige Amtszeit an der Spitze des EU-Rates mit der Vorbereitung eines Fragebogens für die EU-Mitgliedstaaten gestartet. Dieser soll klären, ob und in welchen Bereichen die Länder offen für Änderungen im EU-Entscheidungsprozess wären.

Aujourd’hui dans l’Expresso : réforme des traités européens, incendies incontrôlables en Gironde et impasse politique en Italie

The problem did not pop up just this summer. The consequences of the climate crisis, compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, have significantly driven up food prices, tipping millions of people into hunger, especially in developing countries.