The NCRE industry projects great growth in Chile during 2023: How to make its processes more sustainable?

By Hidronor
January 2023

This is a machine translation of the original press release issued in Spanish

Advancing towards carbon neutrality by 2050, in addition to other initiatives that aim to build a more sustainable country, is one of the most important objectives that Chile has imposed in recent years, and everything seems to indicate that achieving it will be very feasible, although quite challenging.

So much so that the latest Climatescope report -developed by BloombergNEF- placed our country in first place among emerging markets for investment in clean energy, and ninth in the general ranking, with a score of 2.58 out of 5 possible.

On this point, it is worth noting that part of this recognition is due to the fact that Chile began this path with an important goal: to reach 20% of the total national energy matrix by 2025 from renewable energies; objective that was met and even exceeded by far, achieving that 25% of the matrix was "green" in 2020 (with 18% coming from solar and wind energy).

However, our country is also working on the updated National Determined Contributions (CND) to comply with the Paris Agreement, which establishes that the greenhouse gas budget does not exceed 1.1Mt of CO2 between 2020 and 2030.

But the most recent advance associated with this issue is the announcement of the possibility of entering indications to increase the quota for Non-Conventional Renewable Energies (ERNC) from the current 20% to 40% by 2030 as a global goal, and from 30% for each hourly block.

If approved (and even if not, the growth trend of this industry is evident) these milestones mark a robust outlook for the future of NCRE in Chile, which suggests that in the coming years there will be many more companies dedicated to this item that will add value to the fulfillment of this national goal.

However, and despite the fact that this industry is a great contribution in terms of environmental sustainability for the country, it does not escape the reality of generating hazardous industrial waste during the production process, so it must act responsibly in accordance with the current law with proper management and treatment of the industrial waste it generates.

In detail, the companies dedicated to the generation of NCRE must have a "Waste Management Management Plan" in accordance with the specific Supreme Decrees that govern it (DS148) and, to carry it out, they generally go to expert companies in this type of services that have the expert know-how and technical capabilities to carry out these works.

As part of the national offer, Hidronor has positioned itself as a strategic environmental partner for the main clean energy generators, standing out as one of the companies with the greatest service capacity nationwide, since it has a wide range of solutions associated with the management , treatment and safe disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous industrial waste, as well as recycling and revaluation of waste, among others.

“The main challenges in waste management for NCRE projects have to do with the provider company having the capacity to provide care in remote places, difficult to access, with little communication and with changing needs, which implies great challenges and is here where we have managed to position ourselves as strategic partners of our clients, fully complying with requirements in different areas of the country. We currently have nationwide coverage from Arica to Punta Arenas, which expands the response capacity we have towards this type of company”, points out Luis Briones, Hidronor Business Development Engineer.

In order to extract the maximum benefit from each residue -thus contributing to the increase in the country's circular economy- the company also revalues some of them, such as the residual oils generated by these plants to produce alternative fuel that is later used by other industries (such as cement factories), and used batteries used to manufacture new units or, failing that, their materials are reused as raw material for other processes, reinserting them back into the production and consumption chain.

In addition, Hidronor also has the necessary capacity and experience to carry out industrial cleaning of the containers used in production processes so that they can be reused up to six times before being safely disposed of, which contributes to reducing waste material that ultimately ends up in security deposits.

Thanks to services of this type, companies dedicated to the generation of NCRE, as well as many others, can count on the peace of mind of knowing that their waste is being managed and treated responsibly, acting in favor of environmental sustainability and providing great value. to the national industry with the incorporation of greener and more efficient processes.