Billed as Latin America’s biggest wind farm, a 250-megawatt wind facility in Mexico’s Oaxaca state is now complete. A US$550-million joint venture of the Spanish firm Acciona Energía and the Mexican cement giant Cemex, the farm will generate renewable power equivalent to 25% of the electricity consumption of Cemex’s Mexican plants. Mexican law prohibits private companies from connecting to the grid to sell power straight to consumers, so a growing number of companies are engaging in so-called self-generation—producing power for their own use. The wind farm is the most impressive of the smattering of such projects around the country. Acciona says its 167-turbine farm is the largest in Latin America. An additional 50 megawatts slated for next year...
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Brazil is imposing a set of environmental-sustainability standards that the federal government must apply to its sales prospectuses, bidding rules and contracts for goods and services. The standards, drafted in consultation with the Environment Ministry, were issued Jan. 19 and slated to take effect Feb. 19. They require that proposals presented by companies bidding for government contracts must comply with the standards in order to receive consideration. Once proposals are judged to comply, the winner will be determined solely by price. For government-contracted construction projects, the sustainability standards promote water and electricity conservation; clean energy; solid-waste disposal; proof-of-origin documentation for Timber; and recycling. The standards also impose energy-efficiency, biodegradability, water-conservation and other criteria on government-purchased goods and...
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Chilean pulp producer Celulosa Arauco (Celco) has agreed to pay a US$1.1 million out-of-court settlement stemming from the largest fine ever imposed by the Chilean government for environmental damage. The original, record-breaking fine was more than three times the settlement amount—2 billion Chilean pesos, or about US$3.7 million. That fine was levied in 2007 by the State Defense Council, the official government prosecutor’s office, which targeted the company for polluting the Mataquito River near the city of Talca in Chile’s central Maule region. The company’s Licancel plant was found to have dumped 70,000 tons of toxic liquid waste into the river in June 2007, causing the deaths of thousands of fish and other aquatic life. After a lengthy legal...
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In Argentina’s southern province of Santa Cruz, construction of a coal-fired electric plant is generating controversy about pollution, power and jobs. The planned US$700 million, 240-megawatt Río Turbio plant is unusual in Argentina, where just 0.5% of electric power is made from coal. It is being built at the mouth of a coal mine that was developed in the 1940s but has experienced a long decline since its heyday in the 1960s, prompting the government in recent years to bolster it through public investment. Aside from adding electric-generation capacity, the project appears aimed in part as a means of job creation and economic reactivation in the home province of President Cristina Kirchner and her husband Néstor Kirchner, her predecessor as president...
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