President Piñera presents “Proyecto Antípodas” at APEC 2021: “It will allow us to share Chile’s clean solar energy in order to meet other countries’ nighttime electricity demand”
The initiative seeks to build a strategic alliance with Asian countries for Chile to export between 200 and 600 GW of electricity via a long-distance underwater cable, which will prevent 4.5% of the world’s CO2 emissions being released each year.
This Friday the President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, presented the “Proyecto Antípodas” (Antipodes Project) to export clean energy at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) 2021 Economic Leaders’ Meeting.
During his speech, which he made online, the President shared the ambitious and environmentally-responsible Proyecto Antípodas with the bloc’s leaders. The project hopes to be a significant step in meeting the targets of the “one sun, one world, one grid” initiative.
“This project will allow us to share the clean, reliable and renewable solar energy that we can produce in Chile during the day, in order to meet some Asian countries’ nighttime electricity demand, replacing polluting energy with clean, renewable energy,” the President explained to Asia-Pacific country leaders. Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand and leader of the forum; Xi Jinping, President of China; Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation; and Joe Biden, President of the USA, were present to hear President Piñera’s speech.
The project seeks to create a global energy network, through which Chile’s clean photovoltaic energy can be made available to the countries that need it. Chile has the potential to export between 200 and 600 gigawatts.
“With this project, we will be taking advantage of the distance between our countries, which is often seen as an obstacle to our integration, and using it to our benefit, to be able to produce and consume solar energy 24 hours a day,” President Piñera stated.
The project has the potential to reduce the world’s total CO2 emissions by up to 4.5%; this is more than 1.6 billion tons of CO2 per year.
The President made a special call to the leaders present to continue collaborating and finding creative solutions that would benefit trade, development and growth in a sustainable and responsible way.
He also highlighted the work of APEC and the results achieved under the leadership of New Zealand and the country’s Primer Minister, Jacinda Ardern.
“I call on all APEC member countries to continue collaborating in the forum, so that together we can build a more prosperous, resilient, inclusive and sustainable region for all of our countries and for all of our people,” President Piñera concluded.