Commission approves Cuervo hydro scheme in Chile

An environmental commission in Chile has voted unanimously to approve construction of a 640MW hydroelectric project in the country’s Aysen region.Despite opposition from the community, the Aysén Region’s Environmental Evaluation Commission said it voted in favour of the $6.45B Cuervo project following a rigorous environmental evaluation process. The project is to be built by Energía Austral, a company owned by Australia’s Origin Energy and global mining firm Xstrata Copper. It was originally submitted for environmental evaluation in August 2009. During this process, Energía Austral responded to four rounds of observations and queries from the different government services with responsibility for environmental matters during which it provided complementary information and clarified the measures to mitigate and compensate for the project’s impacts, the company said in a statement. “We have worked to develop a sustainable project that will contribute clean energy from a renewable source, helping Chile meet its rapidly growing demand for energy, as well as delivering concrete benefits for the Aysén Region by creating jobs and boosting tourism and the local economy in general,” said Energía Austral’s general manager, Alberto Quiñones. “We have carried out a rigorous and transparent evaluation process of which we are proud, providing early information to the community and adhering fully to Chile’s environmental regulation.”The mitigation and compensation plan considers measures to promote tourism, address forestry issues and reduce the project’s social impact. The approved Environmental Impact Study also includes a number of initiatives voluntarily proposed by Energia Austral to improve the project’s benefits. At the peak of its construction phase, Cuervo will create about 1650 jobs of which 20% will be filled locally. Energía Austral has provided local labour training programmes since 2007 to meet this target.Cuervo is the first of four projects that Energía Austral will submit for environmental evaluation. This includes three generation projects (Cuervo, Blanco and Cóndor) and the transmission line required to transport the power they generate to the Central Interconnected Grid (SIC) which serves the area from Taltal to Chiloé.The next project to be submitted for evaluation will be the Blanco Plant. Located 30km southeast of the city of Puerto Aysén, it will have a total installed capacity of 375MW.Once fully operational, Energía Austral will have a capacity of close to 1000MW. This is the equivalent of 8.4% of the SIC’s present installed capacity and represents an important contribution to Chile’s development. Energia Austral is 51% owned by Origin Energy and 49% by Xstrata Copper. Xstrata had originally owned 100% of the company but sold the majority stake to Origin in April 2012.