Generation industry commits to US$23bn investment in renewables to lead the energy transition

PRESS RELEASE from Generadoras de Chile
August 16, 2022

(Please note that this is a machine translation of the original release, issued in Spanish)

August 16th. - The board of directors of Generadoras de Chile, made up of the general managers and main executives of its associates, met today with the Minister of Energy, Claudio Huepe, and committed to promoting projects worth USD 23 billion over the next five years, which that will allow us to lead the energy transition and work together on the challenges necessary to achieve the country's goal of carbon neutrality.

This investment considers projects in solar and wind generation, storage and green hydrogen from Arica to Magallanes.

The meeting between Minister Huepe and the union that brings together the main companies in the energy industry, focused on the importance of the sector for the sustainable development of the country and the will of its associates to commit investment in the short and medium term that the decarbonization process, as well as agreeing on a public-private collaboration framework for timely development on the scale and speed required by the energy transition.

During his speech, the Minister of Energy valued the public-private work that will allow progress in the just energy transition in our country.

“This meeting is very relevant for the sector. We met with the main generators in Chile to work on that sequence that is so important for the country, such as investment, growth and development. It is also what we want to carry forward as a ministry. We know that this sector is essential both for national development and for economic growth, therefore, we have dealt with a variety of issues that have to do with how we can work together in a public-private partnership to have better results," he said. The authority.

For his part, the union's executive president, Claudio Seebach, expressed the commitment of Generadoras de Chile through these investment projects.

“Faced with this challenge, as representatives of the country's electricity generation industry, we have established a joint commitment to advance in the development of an effective investment agenda in renewable energies, storage and green hydrogen in the next five years, with the objective to move towards the energy transition, reaffirm the removal of coal from the productive matrix in a sustainable way, and work so that the projects contribute to generating shared value in the communities and in the entire chain of territorial actors linked to their development”, he pointed out.

In this regard, the leaders of the generation companies emphasized the need to work on public-private collaboration policies that can provide certainty to the operation of the energy sector, that facilitate investment, competition, technological progress and the innovation necessary to promote the process. In turn, they highlighted the importance of advancing in the promotion of enabling conditions such as a robust and timely transmission and storage network, the streamlining of permits, regulatory predictability, land use planning, early dialogue with the communities, and the promotion of of the good practices of the companies in the territory.