I refer to the latter two because they are examples of countries that have put a concerted effort into having Carbon Free National Electrical Grids. From what I know, Iceland, with it's famous Geothermal Plants creating about a quarter of it's grid energy, and a good deal more of it's bragging rights, not to mention one of the world's coolest spas in The Blue Lagoon, the rest coming from hydroelectric dams. As far as I can tell, Iceland is alone in this distinction.
New Zealand, the kings of practicality, are at an impressive 70% carbon free for their grid, and the rest seems to come from a good deal of Natural Gas that they pump themselves.. the most green-washed of Petroleum products, though far from truly green, but it all makes for an impressive mix given that it has a population some 15 times little Iceland's 300,000 people.. it{s a national goal to someday be carbon free from an electricity standpoint..
but Nicaragua, what the hell can I be talking about? Certainly one of the poorest countries on earth can't be
riding up on these two international paragons of righteous unstinking defication!?
Nicaragua is a funny place.. it's poor as hell is true.. one of the last countries in the world that people seem to make about 2 dollars a day in... it was stalled by war and a bet on communism after a Soviet sponsored but perhaps locally justified overthrow of the Somoza Family who ran the country like a hacienda for some 43 years. Then the Sandinista's came and did a complete about face from it's Banana Republic past, but this pissed off Ronald Reagan, and the Contras were formed, and poor Nicaragua, betting righteously on the loosing side in a Global Showdown, got it's social justice but never quite it's prosperity.. The Sandinista Leadership under Daniel Ortega, a smart but not necessarily perfect Guerrilla Leader turned President, cashed in towards the end when the writing was on the wall, his Soviet Patrons on the ropes, and his Greatest opposition, an outspoken Newspaper Editor, Violetta Chamorra, winning fair elections after some 10 years of Ortega's somewhat genuine yet hamstrung leadership. She was, by the way, the first female freely Elected Head of State in the Western Hemisphere.
Anyhow, Ortega is plucky, not that bad, and well, he has the experience, which ain't too easy to come by in such a small country, has the status to Pal around with the Castro's and Chavez's of the World in his old Olive Drab Uniform, and he does seem to see what's going on even if he indulged in some designer glasses and might be looking the other way as Coke streams past his country... And in 2007 he got himself re-elected again after about 10 years of Chamorra's party. What makes this important, is that unlike the other petty tyrants of the Bolivarian Movement, he doesn't seem to want to ignore either global warming or the threat of having a Crude Oil dependent grid, especially when his country doesn't produce any Oil. Even if he gets it cheap, he still has to pay for it, and he doesn't know how much longer he can get it cheap. Need I remind anyone that Uncle Hugo just passed on? In addition, as if to remind him of the vulnerability, there was a famous CIA operation during the Cowboy days of the Anti Sandinista movement in the 80's where some CIA agents laid mines in an important Nicaraguan Pacific port and tried to destroy their ability to import oil, and I believe, tried to mortar and destroy their Oil Storage in the port as well. In such a small country, they are just a few tanks away from the lights being out.
Now here's where it gets interesting.. Nicaragua just won a dispute with Colombia over Control of Economic Rights of a vast part of the Caribbean sea off their Coast. Now Colombia under Santos is no blustery place... it's beginning to heal from 50 years of Civil War under Santo's kind of Clinton-esque humanity, but it's one of the most Libertarian countries on Earth, and you can sure as hell believe they would have explored for oil had they won, but Ortega, he's a funny cat, and he said no to oil exploration, for what seem to be environmental reasons..
Reuters:Ortega Says No To Oil Exploration
To be sure, eastern Nicaragua is an extension of Honduras's Mosquito Coast.. it's virtually uninhabited, almost everyone living between the lakes and the West Coast, over by the Volcanoes. Did somebody say Volcanoes... yep.. this is the part you have been waiting for.
Now realize that Nicaragua is one of the least electrified countries on earth.. it's an NGO's Dream of Neediness, but since they allegedly threw the cleptocrats out in 1979 (there might be a few in the new regime..), it's a rare case of somewhat dignified forward thinking in the Tercero Mundo, even though the only place to even come close to being a modern city in the whole country is Managua, an ugly one at that.. It's also important to remember that the whole country only uses less than a gigawatt.. heck, there are living room TV's in America that might use more than a Gigawatt (especially if they are watching Back the Future! ), but in my humble need for hope, I am going to find it where I can, and little Nicaragua is starting to put some out.
Now this blog post all started with me having a juice in the bar of a pretty old hotel in Leon, Nicaragua, kind of Nicaragua's Boston.. the Second City and revered university town, where even Ortega attended. Not much o a place mind you, and one of those places where when you meet an expat, you are so far out, you don't pretend you don't see each other so you they can maintain their only gringo in the world fantasy.. you talk to each other.. so I asked him what the hell he was dong here, and he said living large and working on the nearby Geothermal Plant. We talked a bit, but like many expats, he was living the nights as liquidly as he was sweating the days, and he blurred into a party with a few of his chosen female companions, but for a while I got an earnest recounting of what I believe was his Canadian Company's assistance of Nicaragua in their quest for Energy Independence. And the research sustains it.. these are little projects, but big for Nicaragua... I have seen Geothermal Plants around the World, Iceland, New Zealand, Hawaii, and they tend to just be a pile of pipes coming out f the ground and an odd building or two, but they have a magical air, like something out of an old Japanese Sci Fi Movie, and as he described the plant a few miles east of Leon, I got that tingle like I had again discovered the birthplace of Godzilla!
Turns out they built two, and my guess is that he was working on San Jacinto.
http://www.greatenergychallengeblog.com/2012/06/07/nicaragua-looks-to-geothermal-for-energy-independence/
http://renewables.seenews.com/news/ram-power-puts-online-72-mw-geothermal-plant-in-nicaragua-325531
They seem to be expanding as they can, with a possible capacity of 90 Megawatts, which is like 10% of their grid output right now, with likely a few hundred more possible.. feeling a bit hot, Iceland?
Anyhow, they aren't stopping there.. they are playing with Wind possibilities as well, a few farms that produce maybe 60mw, small installations by world standards, but big drops in this small pond...
my guess is that more are planned... and now to hand it to them, they have a bit of the Brazil thing gong.. it seems that in addition to the large amount of foreign oil they currently have to burn for the rest of the grid, I would guess from their buddies Venezuela or Ecuador, they are able to ween about 10% of it off by burning byproducts of Sugar Cane Production...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Nicaragua
and they aren't stopping there, stepping now intentionally into the biomass world, not just for burning sugar byproduct:
http://www.nicaraguadispatch.com/news/2013/02/agricorp-signs-deal-for-biomass-plant/6830
My guess is that this will keep rolling along and they just might make the goal I recently discovered, for them to be 94% fossil fuel free by 2017
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/01/06/94-renewable-energy-by-2017-is-goal-for-nicaragua/
2017 is hardly an arbitrary number, like countries and treaties toss around for 2025, 2040, and 2050.. there must be projects in the works now to justify such a specific goal. Now if you look at the above link about 2017, there is something interesting if you scroll down a bit.. a list of about 45 countries that are largely fossil fuel free, which perhaps would have been good for me to find about an hour ago when started writing, but if you examine it, it's a bunch of countries like Colombia that are kind of accidentally clean because they are small and built a lot of Hydroelectric Capacity, which I will admit is my least favorite clean energy, although I am not going to claim much love for hydrogen or intentional biomass either if it creates more carbon that it displaces.
Realizing this makes me appreciate Nicaragua even more, because they are going about this is such a sophisticated way, not just ham fisting it like the massive Three Rivers Gorge in China... so I am proud to now call little Nicaragua the Mouse that is Roaring Less and Less, in reference to the Peter Sellers Film ( the famous creator of Dr. Strangelove and The Pink Panther Films amongst others), The Mouse that Roared, about a little country in Europe that somehow gets a nuclear bomb almost by accident after attempting to invade America and intentionally loose so as to benefit from something akin to a Marshall Plan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7L7WLFBYR4
Nicaragua, for it's part, selfishly motivated though it may be, is working to diffuse something akin to a doomsday device for the coming century.. Global Warming.
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