MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

UK and Germany support small scale renewable energy project in Chile

Ambassador Benjamin with the Chilean ministers

The UK is supporting and helping finance the development of a 20 million-dollar small scale renewable energy project in Chile. The project will be financed from the joint UK-Germany NAMA (Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action) Facility and Chile's is only one in four of 47 projects worldwide that applied for this funding and reflects the quality of the Chilean application.

 On 15 November in Warsaw, during the 19th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UK made the announcement it had pre-approved the finance for the 20m dollars Chilean renewable energy project.

British ambassador in Santiago Jon Benjamin met with Chilean Ministers of Energy and Environment to personally congratulate them on this achievement. Also present were the German Ambassador, Hans-Henning Blomeyer-Bartenstein; Ms. Maria Paz de la Cruz, Director of the Renewable Energy Centre, and Ambassador Pedro Oyarce, Assistant Director General for Multilateral and Global Issues in the Foreign Ministry.

“I am thrilled that a Chilean project made the cut. The UK and Chile have, for many years, worked together on climate change, both in international negotiations and in concrete projects on the ground in Chile to further the transition to a lower carbon economy. This project is another re-affirmation of our commitment to that partnership”, said Ambassador Benjamin.

“Confidence building measures such as this are an important part of building trust, essential to arrive at a legally binding, universally applicable climate change agreement by 2015. I’m glad that British and Chilean negotiating teams are working closely together on this”.

The Renewable Energy project will support the development of small scale distributed renewable energy, for example in hotels, agro-industry and malls. In a country with such a high renewable energy potential, “this is off utmost priority”.

The project is in addition to the 28m dollars of climate finance the UK has provided to Chile since 2010, including through multilateral institutions – such as support for the concentrated solar power plant in Atacama through the Clean Technology Fund – and bilateral projects.