The economic benefits of climate action

Whitney Pennington Rodgers:
Marcelo Mena is an environmentalist,

a scholar,

and he is the former
Minister of Environment for Chile.

Welcome, Marcelo.

Marcelo Mena: How are you doing, Whitney.
Thanks for the invitation.

WPR: Perfect. Great.

Of course, thank you so much
for being with us here today.

And you know, before we dive
into the future of climate action

in Chile and beyond,

I think it would be great for us
to talk about the present,

and why Chile really represents
a country that is worth thinking about

when we talk about climate.

You know, recently there have been
lots of commendable actions

taken by your country
when we think about climate.

Chile recently committed
to net zero emissions by 2050,

the first in the Americas to do this,

and that's especially notable
when you think about

how much of Chile's economy
really depends on carbon emissions:

mining, agriculture, and spaces like that.

So could you start a little bit
by just talking about

how would this even be possible
to get to net zero emissions in 30 years,

and what would that mean for Chile?

MM: It was a very surreal image

when we saw Minister Schmidt,

the COP25 president,

Patricia Espinosa,
the UN head on climate change,

with masks delivering this new NDC.

The important thing here is things
that are hard to build require consensus,

but therefore to get rid
of that commitment,

you need to have another consensus.

This hasn't happened,

so I think is, the reason why Chile
has a sort of vision towards mitigation

that's ambitious

is that we see that there's
a big economic benefit.

We have seen, we've witnessed,

what the renewable energy sector
has been able to do for investment,

for lowering energy costs,

and so therefore to reach this goal

we will inevitably expand
to 100 percent renewable,

but we'll also transform our industry,
which is heavy on fossil fuels,

towards low emissions,

with the hydrogen economy kicking in,

with a recently launched committee
that I formed, that Minister Jobet,

the Minister of Energy, set up.

And also energy efficiency
and a lot of capture, carbon capture.

We are endowed with
a lot of natural capital.

Taking care of that natural capital
and expanding plantations

will allow us to reach net zero by 2050.

WPR: That's great.

And now it seems like Chile
has such a huge focus, then,

in thinking about renewable energy
and thinking about climate.

But this wasn't always the case.

Could you talk a little bit, I guess,

about the history of how Chile
arrived at this moment?

MM: Yeah, so in 2011, 2010,

we had an energy discussion
with incumbents

saying the only way we could solve
our energy problems

will be through large coal
and large hydro in Patagonia.

And that really polarized the discussion.

We got together as a community
after large protests

that triggered a lot of social movements,

and we started discussing

how we should be able
to do our energy going forward.

The population, public unrest,
set up almost 6,000 megawatts

of coal fired power plants
to never be built.

And when the government,
Michelle Bachelet's government came in,

we pulled the plug on HidroAysén project,

which is a big hydro project
in the Patagonia.

And both of these conditions
enabled an opportunity

for renewable energy to be set in.

We put in carbon taxes,

we put in environmental regulations,

and we set up an energy strategy
that we did building on discussing

and looking at the data

in which we thought that
the 70 percent renewable energy by 2050

was going to be a target
that we could agree on.

This target has been long surpassed.

Now we're thinking of reaching
that same goal by 2030.

WPR: And what you were saying
about social protests,

that's something that a lot of people
maybe have been following

news of what's going in Chile
are familiar with recent social protests,

and I think I'm curious about
how you see that factoring in

to climate action moving forward.

How might these social protests

play a role in what
climate action you see?

And, really, how is it possible for Chile
to be a leader in climate action

while also struggling
with some of these social issues?

MM: Well, the social issues,

which are very profound
and important to address,

caused, for example, COP25

to not be able to be held in Santiago,
and to go to Madrid.

And this also shifted a whole bunch
of the discussions and announcements

that were done

and we were expecting to have.

But regardless of this,

the fact that we have this commitment
from the government today

shows that there's a resolution
to continue forward.

But really the model,

the economic model of Chile,

was brought into question,

because the environmental issues,
for example, are quite widespread,

and many times you have
large coal-fired power plants

being situated where people live

and with higher mortality rates.

Somebody who lives
where a power plant is installed

has twice the rate of death

in comparison to other people in Chile.

So the model of having many people
be impacted for the benefit of few

is something that caused
and triggered the social unrest.

And it goes into the economic model itself

of extracting, colluding,
impacting communities

that may not see the benefits
of these economic activities.

So while we've done a lot,
we've come a long way,

for example in securing

a very emblematic agreement
to phase out coal-fired power plants,

many people that this
wasn't done fast enough

and want this action to be brought faster.

WPR: And it sounds like having people
be the voice and the engine

behind making that happen

has really been part
of this historical thread

with climate action in Chile

and seems like it would really
lead things moving into the future.

MM: No, definitely -- yes.
Go ahead. Sorry.

WPR: Go ahead. Please go ahead.

We have a little bit of a delay.

MM: Starting out, we are doing well,

but I think we need
to double down our commitments.

So even though
we have ministries involved,

we have civil society involved,

we need to bring in
the mainstream industry.

I think, for example, the mining sector
has a great opportunity

to be the solution
for the environmental issues,

because we provide the copper,
the cobalt, the lithium

that are required for solar PV panels,
for battery storage.

But we need to do this in a clean manner.

I think that's the biggest challenge
we're going to have

in the next 20 years ahead.

WPR: And sort of pivoting to the pandemic

and to thinking about what's going,

right now the entire world has obviously
been devastated by this crisis.

What have been some of the unique
challenges that Chile has faced

during this pandemic?

MM: Well, definitely, as anybody,

we are always struggling within

taking actions today to prevent
a deeper impact in the future.

And we started off pretty well.

We shut off schools.

We shut off different cities
and had a quarantine.

But we gave the wrong signals to people

and we didn't have a consistent effort,

and this has brought us to have
the highest infection rates per capita

in the world these days.

So this goes to show that,
the same parallels with climate change.

We need to take action now
to prevent deeper impact later.

And I think we need
to take the lesson of this

to continue with an effort,

because one thing is to announce
an ambitious NDC.

Another thing is to invest and do
the regulations that you require

to turn this into reality.

But there are some things
that are interesting.

The pollution in Santiago,

which is one of the most polluted capitals
historically in Latin America,

has dropped substantially.

The car-related emissions are down almost 80 to 90 percent, which is pretty substantive. And we look at the example of what's going on. Harvard University showed a study in which they showed higher mortality rates for more polluted cities. And this is also the case in Chile. For every microgram of pollution, PM2.5, there is an increase of the fatality rate of nine percent. But the thing is, we could also look back at what we've achieved up to now. Had we not taken measures to clean the air, as we've done in Chile these last 20 years, we would be talking about five times more people would have died from COVID. We have around 800 people that have died due to COVID directly, but this would have been much higher had we not taken action. And in fact, due to the lower pollution, if we estimate and predict this to the rest of the year, we will have saved as many lives reducing the pollution as we have lost in COVID, showing that there's a pandemic that we also need to address, which is the crisis on air pollution that suffocates many cities in the world.