Energía y proyectos Solares: Armonizando con la Naturaleza y la energía 100% limpia

Proyectos solares están integrando tecnología limpia para generar energía sin emisiones de gases, al mismo tiempo que protegen y conviven en armonía con los ecosistemas locales. En este capítulo exploramos cómo estos proyectos contribuyen a preservar la biodiversidad y promover un futuro más sostenible desde Enel Colombia y Centroamérica.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hey. How am I doing witha warm greeting? He speaks to Pepe
Morón and I welcome you to thisnew chapter of the RCN Radio ecopodcast.
Today talking about solar projects, important, especially because today they are very popular
and we want to know how theylive with the ecosystems in which they are
inserted. We also want to findout how these initiatives, today they coexist

(00:23):
with the environment and what they aredoing to protect the country' s environmental
resources. So, you know,prepare a coffee, look for, a
little corner, comfortable, and getready for this environmental journey around the world.
Welcome EGO Podcast RCN Radio. Forsome years now, photovoltaic parks have

(00:44):
become important and it is key totalk about this issue and more in a
country like ours, such as Colombia, which has geographic spaces that allow these
parks to develop. Important because theyalso contribute to the delivery or proration of
100% clean energies and this iscertainly fundamental precisely to know a little more

(01:06):
what is behind these projects in acountry like ours. We have invited to
the Radio rc Eco Podcast on thisoccasion, key guest as always to understand
a little more of this situation.Sandra Sierra, she is a security and
environmental manager for Colombia and Central America. Sandra, welcome and thank you for
accepting this invitation from Radio PEPE's Eco Podcast rc. Thank you for

(01:29):
the well- happy invitation to behere with you today We want our listeners
to know much more about this subject. We want to delve into the situation
that we are living in the countrytoday and that is why we want to
take advantage of its presence in thesestudies to tell us in detail what we
are going to do in Colombia ona topic like this, because I think

(01:53):
it is important to say that whenwe build a solar project, as when
we build any type of project thatintervenes a natural habitat, impacts will always
be generated. And what we seekin us with the construction of our parks
is that basically the impacts are avoidedand if not, we can avoid them,
because we can minimize them to themaximum. We are always looking for

(02:17):
the protection and conservation of the environmentand if we also have other strategies such
as restoration, recovery and, ifnot, compensation. For that, before
we start a project we have todo an environmental impact study and that environmental
impact study draws a road map forus. Basically, what is helping us

(02:38):
is to identify all those positive negativeimpacts that we have with the project,
and we also need to identify howwe will manage them to affect them.
In this case, I wanted totalk to you today about flora and fauna,
especially how these projects help the conservationof the environment and flora and the

(02:59):
role of the place. You touchon a key point and it is the
issue of the effects that can haveon the environment. These kinds of programs
serve precisely to generate pedagogy so thatpeople learn how much can be done and
not simply repeat how what is heardwithout knowledge. Beyond important to us the

(03:23):
presence of an important expert that youare with us and there is a concern
that I have heard much that hasto do with these say, these consequences
that can be generated and this implementationof measures that you tell us, what
guidelines do you have today for thesolar projects of it to contribute then to

(03:44):
that conservation of the fauna and florathat you mentioned. I think the first
thing I would share with you isthat the company has a great commitment to
the protection of the environment and naturalresources where we work in the protection of
ecosystems is fundamental and above all,in the solar parks where we are working,

(04:05):
which are on the coast, onthe Atlantic coast, where we have
a very particular ecosystem, which isthe tropical dry forest. This tropical forest
is characterized by a very high richnessof biodiversity, true, but also has
a high endemism. And when Italk about endemism, it' s basically

(04:29):
that those species that you identify inthose ecosystems you just find there, you
don' t find them anywhere else. So, for us, aware of
that very special ecosystem in which wework, and also aware of the high
biodiversity that we manage, because wehave to generate very specific strategies for the
protection of the environment. I wouldtell you master general, when we'

(04:57):
re going to intervene in an areawe' re going to build, we
' re going to make a subfieldof a park where we' re going
to put the panels. Right,so we do a job called area release.
So what does that area release consistof? Basically, we first looked
at what that area that' shappening to me in this contractor' s

(05:17):
case, this one inside the areathat has allowed me to intervene by the
environmental authority. Yes, after thatwe have to identify the species of fauna
in order to rescue them, becausewe have obligations, conditions, for example,
in the epiphytes, which are,for example, you see, orchids,

(05:38):
bromeliads, moss. Those are epiphytes. Those epiphytes, we have to
rescue them, we have to takethem to a place we have set out
for that purpose. There' ssomething similar about wildlife. I have to
identify a place before all this interventionwhere I want to move that fauna.

(06:02):
I have to get her out ofthere because I' m going to intervene.
Then I look for a place thathas ecological conditions similar to those of
the ecosystem where it is, thathas food, that has food, that
has very similar conditions, true tobe able to take them there. That
is parted and I forgive the interruptingof the so- called municipality of fauna.

(06:25):
Or this would be a pre-trial process that would be needed later.
It' s a forerunner, butit' s part of the scare
- off process. So, firstI identify the areas where I want to
take him and then I start theprocess of running away. What' s
the scare? Basically I want tomobilize all the little animals, true that
they are in an area to moveand move where I need them, right

(06:47):
where I already identify that they cansurvive. And there' s a lot
of driving techniques. I could tellyou some, for example, there are
scares or not. Then we putsome special noises, true to be able
to mobilize the fauna that has fastor medium mobility. We put up some

(07:11):
silhouettes of animals that are predators ofthose little animals to be scared and moved.
We also inspect the caves of thelittle animals. And when we can
no longer do more because all thatfauna that is of high and medium mobility
has already been mobilized, we haveto enter to make a rescue, because

(07:38):
there are reptiles. Right, there' s the snakes, there' s
the lizards, there' s theturtles. There' s all those little
animals of low mobility that can't move fast. Then we have to
go in and rescue them. Importantthat they think in this way and especially
considering the animals that, with thepresence of this type of structures that are
not normally part, as we havebeen reading, can have stress or some

(08:01):
kind of damage and with this displacementit is prevented that they can suffer this
type of podesia. That' sright, that' s right. Just
as you can see, sometimes wefind wounded animals in that rescue effort.
Then we have to take them toa passing center that we have in each
project we have a specific center tohave this type of fauna and we take

(08:24):
it, we check it, measureit, weigh it, take the temperature
and check it to see if ithas wounds. If she has no injuries,
right, we can free her andlook for places to free her.
Now it can' t be releasedanywhere. Right, so depending on the
kind of animal we have, eitherwe release it into a grassland or we

(08:50):
release it into a lagoon or aforest depends a lot on the species where
we are going to do it now. I would like us to suddenly give
as an image to the viewers,to the listeners of this co podcast and
that they, according to what youcan tell us some kind of anecdote that
locks up or tells us about thesolar projects and the protection of ecosystems,

(09:13):
which is, let' s say, what is most worrying in the homes
of Colombia today, when we talkabout this type of projects and the environmental
reality of the country. What wecan say, I have many anecdotes,
but there is one or two inparticular that I would like to share with
you. One of them is inthe project of the Loma we find an

(09:35):
eagle' s nest with the whiteone. It' s a species that
' s threatened. Yes and so, with this transfer of nests, which
is also part of the rescue process, we had to see what we were
doing, because he was the littleboy. There were two right eagle eggs
and there were their parents. Thenwe had to talk to the experts and

(09:58):
see what we were doing to tryto affect them as little as possible.
After we sat down with all theexperts. The recommendation was do not move
them let them be born true anddevelop until they are mature and can fly.
And then we can intervene. Thatarea, which was an area of

(10:18):
a subfield we had to develop.The decision was made, but the beauty
of all this was that the wholeproject came together to ensure that the eggs
could hatch. They were praised byadopting them basically in their care. He
played generating a protection area of 200square meters around and every day they played,

(10:46):
because obviously, they did the monitoring. They became the most famous polvelos
of all the park and the hilland every day we were looking if they
had already hatched, Right, whenthey were already born. Then, then,
basically more or less monitoring whether theyare already feeding, how they were
feeding, what they were like theconditions and customs of the eagles until they

(11:11):
came to fly then True and wealready considered that they were ripe. And
obviously, we were already able tointervene in the subfield. I' ll
say the hill later. Let uscommit ourselves to the hill, so that
the listeners and I may dedicate ourselvesa little more gift to the hill.
The hill is left in Caesar's department. Right, there we are

(11:31):
developing three major projects. Two ofthem are already finished, the step and
the extension step and now we havethe hill. At Caesar' s.
They' re areas of very highradiation. Right, where we can take
advantage of the resource. But,as I was also saying, they'
re areas of tropical dry forest.Then we have to additionally take care of

(11:54):
those ecosystems. And it is importantto emphasize this, because they are regions
of the country that, let's say, they mention the hill.
All of this refers to a co- ordination as such, belonging to the
southern center of the department of Caesar, and that they are taking into account
the biodiversity of a department that issuper rich in environmental resources and that sometimes

(12:16):
the inhabitants of that region and Itell them because I am of peace Cesar,
they are afraid when they come tothis type of projects, because they
do not know everything that is behindthem and everything that is thought to protect
the environment. When a project likethis arrives not only the benefits that come
later but the fact that you thinkabout the stress, for example, of
animals, the reality of the ecosystem, the quality of ecosystem that you are

(12:37):
intervening in and the possibility that youhave to affect it. And yet,
it doesn' t happen because theytake the measures and that must be highlighted.
It' s worth highlighting that one. Yeah, I think it'
s suddenly not such a well-known topic at the general level. And
we have sought to reach the communities, not only to keep the project and

(12:58):
the actions we do, but alsoto reach the communities. So we have
sought to socialize and also train allthe workers who work on these projects with
us about three zero people. We' ve trained, but we don'
t stay there, too. Wehave also gone to schools, right,
and we have gone to the communityin general, and we have managed to

(13:22):
reach up to 500 people, especiallyfrom the educational communities, because the children,
I think, are the ones whoreceive the most true, those who
value the most and those who aremost aware of the richness and potential that
lies behind knowing, indeed, thefauna and flora of their region and that
have a different chip and come witha very different view of the environment than

(13:46):
that of our generations that at timesand at least in my time, almost
not imported the environmental issue. Onedoes not know the environmental issue little by
little with us as hinge generations.Everything has happened as it has in everyday
life and today, new relationships givea lot of attention to the issue of
the environment. I would like,obviously, to take advantage of your presence

(14:09):
in this chapter of the Eco Podcast, to share or tell the listeners and
what message you can give about thecare of the fauna and flora. You
in your experience, not only asan executive of a super important company,
as it is in Colombia, butalso taking into account your experience in the
territories as we spoke right now ina territory like Caesar. Yes, I

(14:31):
believe that reaching communities seems very importantto me the knowledge sometimes that communities have
of their flowers or fauna. Itnarrows down a little bit if they'
re raptors, if they hurt you, if they add up. I don
' t know the little animals youhave in the barn or something. Right.

(14:54):
For example, I tell you onething. Snakes. Many of them
are on the verge of extinction,because people, when they see them,
are killing them. True, killingthem, because they are a threat to
their cattle or to their chickens,etcetera. Right, and that' s
why they' re now in astate of threat or vulnerability. So,

(15:18):
I think the most beautiful experience canbe to share all this knowledge with them,
share and appreciate the wealth they havein each of the regions to learn
to care for it. And maybeyou don' t have to kill her,
but maybe mobilize her, right,drive her away or take her to

(15:41):
a corporation' s transit center sothey can give her the management she needs
there. I think that' svery important to me. I think it
' s the way we' recoming as a company also to the places
where we are and as I saidon some other occasion. I think that
' s the pride that we havein promoting, seeing that as a line

(16:02):
of business, of generation and inthe true green power, we protect nature
and value it and are a veryvaluable resource for us. Before saying goodbye
to me I would like to askyou about the future, what can we
tell listeners how we see this environmentalcare from a company like you, how
it is in Colombia. Well,towards the future, I think the challenge

(16:25):
is pretty big. True, climatechange is greatly violating ecosystems and if we
do not play our part in thiswhole process of caring for ecosystems, then
what we are going to do isto accelerate their deterioration even more, then
environmental awareness. What we can donot only as companies, but as each

(16:48):
one as a citizen. Of course, it can contribute to the reduction of
pollution, recycling, rescue, protectionof the month, the flora of the
fauna, because it helps us agreat deal. We like to be told
with figures tell us a little bitabout those rescue figures, how we are
going and what numbers we can sayso that today we can easily understand how

(17:12):
this telo is going in Colombia and, above all, in the line of
generation of nel green power we alwayscare like those figures, because they give
us as well as a dimension ofthe scope that we have had in all
the work we carry. Then Iwould tell you forty- seven thousand rescued

(17:33):
animals, true with success. Wehave rescued more than twelve zero pituitary plants,
true that we have taken them tothe places where I have told you
that we have to take care ofthem. And it' s also important
to talk about people. We haveinvolved more than three zero workers in this
whole process. They already know aboutthe care and protection of the fauna and

(17:57):
flora of the place where they work, and we have also managed to involve
the community and, in particular,the educational communities. Then we have about
five hundred people impacted by all ourenvironmental education projects, specifically on these issues,
and you, who have the opportunityto be in the regions, to

(18:18):
get to know this problem and thesecommunities closely, because you do not send
a message precisely to our viewers regardingthis whole environmental issue and how if measures
are being taken to monitor our resourcesfrom clean energies. Yes, I think
it is very important to be ableto have these spaces in order to share

(18:41):
with you, because all the workwe have been doing seems very nice to
me. Also let them know thatcommunities are getting closer to their territory From
another point of view, sometimes theylive with wildlife in a different way,
they see them as a threat.For example, the issue of snakes is
seen as a threat to the animalsthey have on their farms, but when

(19:03):
they already know about them, right, then they learn to take care of
them, learn to respect them and, above all, they could take them
to a transit centre and be ableto relocate them elsewhere. We have a
lot of impact, true, forexample, snakes, rattlesnake is in condition

(19:26):
of vulnerability. True, then,because of all this practice, the so
- called I think it is importantfor everyone to know their territory, the
wealth and the biodiversity that surrounds it, so, to learn a little bit
more about it and learn to carefor and preserve it. And we thank
as always our guests today Sandra Sierrain Colombia, who we thank as always

(19:52):
for accepting this invitation with a sandratheme undoubtedly key for a country like Colombia,
where little by little they have beengrowing these clean energies. And how
nice to know that you are lookingafter the fauna and flora prior to the
entire installation of a project like this, a pleasure you are here and thanks
to the audience also for allowing usto tell you and share these experiences with

(20:15):
you. And, as we alwayssay, the environment is a theme for
everyone and that is precisely why wewanted to bring an expert to know in
this opportunity with Colombia and tell themwhat is behind all these projects and how
they do have to do with environmentalcare in the territories they reach. Thank

(20:37):
you, ego podcast, because theenvironment is a theme for everyone.