Patricio Valdivia, an academic from the Department of Electrical Engineering, refers to the relevance of advancing towards a process of defossilization and sustainable energy transition with the promulgation of the Climate Change law.
As a government initiative that should become a catalyst for initiatives in the country on issues of production, transportation and use of hydrogen in different productive sectors, including mobility, qualifies the director of Innovation and Technology Transfer of the USM, Dr. Patricio Valdivia, the creation of the Interministerial Committee to promote Green Hydrogen and some of the announcements of the first Public Account of the current government on energy matters.
It is an initiative that has just been promoted and that “seeks synergies between the different ministries for efficiency of spending and public policy,” says the academic. “Consequently, to the extent that these initiatives are efficient and are implemented in the industry, they could effectively displace Co2 emissions. For example, implementing public transport with buses based on Hydrogen would build towards decarbonization, but if this committee only develops projects in the pre-competitive stage or demonstration prototypes, the road will be longer”, he explains.
In this sense, it specifies that CORFO has the capacity and experience in the productive development of the country, which is not just an incentive for investment, but also “promoting aspects of training development (that is where universities and CFT come in), regulatory aspects , entrepreneurship seed subsidies, venture capital, venture capital and research and innovation initiatives.
Added to this is the President’s announcement in the Public Account about the creation of the National Lithium Company which, in the academic’s opinion, would be the best way to capitalize on all the efforts regarding the sustainable development of the mineral. “Today there are private companies that exploit lithium, but unfortunately they have not generated added value, value for Chile, which is not clear that these are the ones that give lithium value, since their exploitation contracts do not ask for it. So we have a base error of the time those contracts were generated, ”he explains.
He explains that during Eduardo Bitrán’s Executive Vice-presidency of CORFO, an attempt was made to give value to the lithium exploitation contracts, by incorporating a royalty to the increase in the exploitation quotas of SQM and Albermarle, which would allow financing R&D centers. D in Chile, like CORFO’s Institute of Clean Technologies, but “unfortunately the ITL bidding process is questioned and today it is awaiting the Supreme Court ruling.”
He adds that having a public entity that is concerned with the exploitation of this metal, the formation of human capital, innovation, and entrepreneurship. research and development and sustainable and environmentally friendly exploitation is urgent for Chile, since demand will increase due to electromobility and our duty is to take advantage of this wave to move from an extractive economy to a knowledge economy ”, he pointed out.
Faced with the latter, his opinion was not left out on the importance of advancing in the Storage law that allows Chile to have a regulatory framework also oriented to promote the development of electrical energy storage systems and electromobility where they should be seen favored the implementation of Bess (Batteries), CEAS (Compressed Air), hydrogen and other systems such as flywheels and pumping systems. “Given the great capacity of natural resources that exist in Chile (sun, wind, water, geothermal), but at the same time their high variability and intermittency, it becomes necessary to invest in storage systems to be able to store the resource when it is available. , to be used when necessary or when it is scarce, such as during peak hours when electricity is more expensive”, he concluded.