How Latin America is powering a net-zero future

How Latin America is powering a net-zero future

On Thursday 26 October, Canning House heard from a range of high-level speakers on how Latin America is powering a regional and global transition towards Net Zero, renewable energy generation.

The conference, held at the Royal Institution in Mayfair, London, opened with words of welcome by Jeremy Browne, CEO of Canning House, followed by a Fireside Chat with Lord Callanan, Minister for Energy Efficiency and Green Finance. Jeremy and Lord Callanan discussed the decarbonisation of the UK and Latin America’s energy matrices, covering a huge range of issues from how to power a net-zero Britain, to avenues for international collaboration. Keep an eye on our blog, where a full account of their discussion will be published shortly.

Our first panel, chaired by Miguel Valderrama from the World Energy Council and entitled From land to sea: accelerating LAC’s wind power, brought together expert voices on on- and off-shore wind energy generation, on issues from supply chain to investment, to discuss the technology’s success and growth in Latin America.

Also on the panel were Alan Thomson, Director, Global Energy Business Leader at Arup; Héctor Muñoz, Executive Director Structure Finance Energy Europe and Andean Region at Santander; Preyavart Gadhavi, Director, Energy Infrastructure for Actis; and Adriana Vargas Colwill, Senior Consultant and LatAm Advisor at the Offshore Wind Consultants. Discussion ranged from how best to deliver wind power at scale, the risks investors consider when putting money towards major wind projects, and the specific challenges of developing off-shore wind infrastructure.

Finally, panel two, Catalysing LAC’s Hydrogen Industry, chaired by Eman Martin-Vignerte, Director, External Affairs and Government Relations at Bosch UK, explored the multicolour palette of hydrogen generation – green, blue, grey, pink… – in a lively discussion of the pros, cons, and future of the industry. For Latin America, as a potent source of hydrogen through fast-growing industries in Chile and Brazil, for example, the much-vaunted “fuel of the future” potentially represents a major opportunity not only to decarbonise within the region, but as a long-term strategic commodity for trade.

Our panel – Olivier Mussat, CEO of ATOME; Helio Bustamante, Programme Manager at ITM Power; Peter Durante, Executive Director of Cogitare Advisors and Adrian del Maestro, VP Global Energy Advisory at AECOM – considered several critical issues for the development of Latin America’s, and indeed the world’s hydrogen-production and hydrogen-powered industries. These included regulation of carbon-cleanliness, pragmatic strategies for scale and scalability to avoid short-term “overpromises,” and sources of funding and incentivisation.

The event was followed by a networking reception with drinks and canapés. Canning House thanks Lord Callanan and our panellists for their highly valuable contributions to the conference, our audience for their attention and engagement, and PromPerú for its support of this event.