The newly elected President of Costa Rica, one of the world’s youngest heads of state, 38-year-old former journalist Mr. Carlos Alvarado, has vowed to fully decarbonise the country’s economy and makes it the first carbon-neutral nation in the world by 2021, on the 200th anniversary of its independence.
“Decarbonisation is the great task of our generation and Costa Rica must be one of the first countries in the world to accomplish it, if not the first,” Alvarado said in his inauguration speech of 2018. “We have the titanic and beautiful task of abolishing the use of fossil fuels in our economy to make way for the use of clean and renewable energies.”
Many commentators interpreted this as a decision to ban fossil fuels. Not quite true.
Costa Rica does not have a legislation in place to restricting the use of fossil fuels, nor does its constituency plan to. However, it stepped up its ambition in reducing its share to the negative, climate change –related global ecological footprint.
Its Minister of Environment and Energy, Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, plans to alter the country’s PEM (Primary Energy Mix) by gradually decarbonising it, but also by planting forests, employing better land management, and by the forthcoming carbon sequestration technologies.
Aiming for carbon neutrality by ambitiously set 2021, the tiny Central American state is signalling it wants to beat bigger, more developed and wealthier countries to environmental glory. The UK and much of Scandinavia targets the 2050 as the year of zero net emissions. Germany hoped for the 95% reduction by a year of 2020, but is most probably to miss it.
Costa Rica’s climate change started with its leaders change “Our crisis cannot be environmental… deep and structural, this must be a crisis of our cognitivity. Thus, the latest Climate Change (CC) Report is only seemingly on Climate. It is actually a behavioristic study on (the developmental dead end of) our other ‘CC’ – competition and confrontation, instead of cooperation and consensus.” – warns prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic, and concludes: “Cognitive mind can do it all.”
Well, Costa Rica has it on its grasp: Home to less than 5 million people, it has long played above its weight on the climate change policy formulation, norm setting and instrument formulations as well as on implementation policies and practical actions. Nation has produced echelons of leaders in all generational cohorts who have promoted vigorous and progressive environmental policies at home and on the international stage.
Former President José María Figueres served the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s Advisory Group on Climate Change and Energy. His younger sister, Christiana Figueres, chaired the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UN block that convened the 2015 Paris climate agreement – a most important instrument after FCCC’s Kyoto Protocol.
As curiously as foresightedly, Costa Rica holds no armed force (standing army) for a ¾ of century – ever since 1948. Moreover, by 1994 the country amended its constitution to embody a right to a healthy environment for its citizens as one of the fundamental human rights.
Complementing the unique constitutional right, Costa Rica has impressive practical results in greening its economy.
In 2018 only, the country went 300 days using only renewable energy. As of December 2018, 98.15% of electricity is produced from water, wind, geothermal energy, biomass and the sun (thermal and photovoltaic). Back in 2015, it managed to generate 100 % of its electricity from renewable energy sources for 299 days; in 2016, it ran for 271 days and in 2017 for 300 days on everything but fossil fuels.
According to the Costa Rican Institute of Electricity, the country generates most of its electricity, around 99 per cent, with a variety of methods including hydropower (78 per cent), wind (10 per cent), geothermal energy (10 per cent), biomass (1 per cent) and solar (1 per cent). However, there is still a lot to do. Almost 70 per cent of the country’s (non-electricity) energy consumption still comes for the PEM composed of fossil fuels. Transportation heavily leans on petrol while gas is still widely used for cooking and smaller vehicles.
Greening politics and economy, rethinking transport
In order to meet the targets (domestic and these emanating from the Paris Agreement) on carbon neutrality by 2021, Costa Rica – on its national and subnational level – is now focusing on transportation. Modern passengers and freight transportation is one of the largest polluters all over the world. At the same time it is one of the sectors most tedious to decarbonize. In Costa Rica itself, transportation accounts for some 2/3 of carbon/green-house gas emissions.
Using incentives and subsidies for cleaner vehicles, particularly electric mode of public and personal transportation, the state and city authorities aim to greening and decarbonising. Skilful recalibration of petrol taxing and road-tolls could be one of the solutions. Of course, the easiest way to get to carbon neutrality is to introduce the carbon quotas by limiting the fossil fuels consumption.
However, it has to be reconciled with the current technological possibilities to switch to electric solutions. The batteries, its life time, recharging mode and speed, dispersion and availability of sockets as well as the weight and price of batteries are some of the challenges for years if not decades to come, not only to Costa Rica but even for the world’s technological champions.
On the other hand, as the country’s economy grows, demands for the old-fashioned ICE (inner-combustion engine) cars is rising. In 2017, on every newborn baby two new cars were registered (in contrast to some 120 new electric cars). For over 60% of population diesel fuelled bases, cars and locomotives are daily choice of commuting. The country already ranks second in per capita emissions in Central America, which makes further electrification both a logical choice and urgent necessity.
Elsewhere in the world, governments are also struggling with how to balance financial means and the tasks; driving habits and curbing the emissions, consumeristic social styles with a future imperatives, but it seems Costa Rica is going braver and further than most. Therefore, its greening of politics, energy, economy and international conduct is worth to closely monitor and learn from.
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About the author:
Sinta Stepani, is international relations specialists based in São Paulo, Brazil.
