Promotion of the use of clean energies to improve agricultural productivity in the Andean region
Lima, December 2014 (IICA). At a forum held in Peru within the framework of the COP 20, a number of speakers advocated the use of renewable energy technologies to help add value to agricultural production in rural and peri-urban areas of the country and foster climate change adaptation and mitigation.
The Energy and Environment Partnership (EEP) with the Andean Region, a program implemented by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), and some of its partners shared their experiences with the use of renewable energies in production in rural areas of Peru. The EEP is financed by Finland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
At the forum, the Swiss Foundation for Technical Cooperation (Swisscontact) underscored the importance of clean energies in rural areas where the adoption of a business approach is being used to increase productivity and thereby improve living conditions. The first step was to identify rural businesses into which clean technologies could be incorporated, coordinate work with power companies and establish links with sources of financing and suppliers.
The cooperation agency of The Netherlands presented the advances made with the introduction of bioenergy, a type of renewable energy that uses organic and industrial waste. Power is generated by means of biological or mechanical processes based on plant and animal by-products. A case in point is the Santa Rosillo pilot project, which is affording the community access to electrical power generated from cattle dung.
The EEP program focused on the good energy practices being used to develop production throughout the Andean region. Some of the initiatives being supported include solar pasteurization for rural dairies in Arequipa, Peru; pico- and micro-energy generation (small-scale hydropower) for production in Guanay, Bolivia; biomass waste to heat ovens used to produce brown sugar paste in Cundinamarca, Colombia; and the use of livestock waste for a semi-industrial biodigester in Gualivá, also in Colombia.
The goal of the EEP projects is to benefit families, communities, cooperatives, grassroots organizations and small and medium-sized enterprises by improving their quality of life and boosting the development of production through better access to, and use of, renewable energy.
The Rural Sector Support Group of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP) highlighted the important progress made with stoves, ovens, dryers and solar water heaters, as well as solar coffee and cacao roasters.
It singled out for mention the project for the insertion of solar thermal energy as a cogeneration system for more efficient drying of black tea at the AGROINKA SAC plant in La Convención, Cusco, the largest black tea producer in the region.
Soluciones Prácticas presented an initiative in Cajamarca, Peru involving the use of electricity for production activities in rural areas. The businesses that have been set up include a rice mill, a milk cooling plant and rural carpentry and marble products enterprises.
Under the ENDEV program, Germany’s development cooperation agency GIZ created an institutional platform comprising local and regional governments, international cooperation, Agroideas, decentralized public agencies, non-governmental organizations and leading producers to generate 3000 small rural and peri-urban undertakings.
Business plans are already being implemented under the program.
The forum was organized by Swisscontact, PUCP, the ENDEV program, the EEP program, the SNV Netherlands Development Organisation and Soluciones Prácticas parallel to the 20th Conference of the Parties (COP 20) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
More information:
nurymar.feldman@iica.int