¿Hay posibilidad de que haya un apagón en Colombia?

0:01 The day to day is full of urgent news, noise, polemics and fanfare. But for the quietness, the analysis and what we like to call slow - cooking journalism are my questions, an average rush program made by KFAM inspiring smiles. The world is going through a worrying stage of global warming, and that has brought a dry and heat wave in Colombia. What concerns the power generating companies. An electric power outage is possible in the country. Why the electric service has raised its price for this chapter. We spoke with Angélica Gómez, journalist and co- founder of Economy for the People, with Erasmozuleta, Governor of Córdoba, with Omar Prias, director of the Regulatory Commission for Energy and Gas Creck, and with Natalia Gutierrez, President of the Colombian Sondas and power generators to Colgén. I' m Roberto Pombo. Welcome to chapter seventy - nine of my questions. I' m a fan of the unexpected consequences.

1:14 I will be more precise situations inventions or revolutions that result from an event that has little to do with it. Some call it a maripous effect. I' m going to tell you a couple who marvel at me and surprise you today. The Camambert and Rockefort are a couple of French cheeses very controversial because of their taste, which have the certificate of origin denomination i e they must be made under certain very specific standards, and one of them is the origin of the products with which they are prepared. Then it can only be said that a Skamamberg or Rockefort cheese is ripened in the cellars near Roquefort Sursson, south of Abeirón, Occitania, this means that only a few giant manufacturers now have almost the monopoly of cheese production, which in turn has diminished the diversity of microorganisms in fungi used to mature the product, i e the longo vinicillum. Roqueforti, that is, the law of designation of origin that was established in one thousand nine hundred and twenty- five, is about to cause a type of fungi to die out along with a couple of cheese species and a closer example. And clear of this butterfly effect, one of the most heard and still on the air radio programs. The firefly would not have been possible, but one of the crudest child phenomena in the history of Colombia was March of one thousand nine hundred ninety- two and the low water level in

2:45 the reservoirs the overruns of the mega hydro- elastic project of the Guabio, the assessment of the peso against the dollar, during all the crisis of electricity interconnection, whether that led the country to a situation of insufficient electricity. All this took place at that time, President César Gaviria, to decree a blackout, that is, a nine- hour power outage in Bogotá, ten hours in six departments of the Atlantic coast and up to eighteen hours daily in San Andrés and Providencia. It was these nights without electricity and, consequently, without television, that led to the birth of a program to accompany Colombians in the dark. Once back to normal power supply. The program continues until today from January of one thousand nine hundred and ninety- three, when it ended.

3:35 The country has not experienced a blackout or an energy crisis. However, a few months ago, while the country and the planet were going through a heat crisis and a child phenomenon that hit the country heavily, the ghost of a possible blackout appeared in various media and in the warnings of experts and energy- generating companies. In October last year, the S S S S Ons, newspapers, news and Internet pages asked themselves the same question. There' s a risk of a blackout. Those of us who live what happened thirty- one years ago are set off a kind of alarm inside our being We are scared of that possibility and I don' t even want to imagine the younger ones having to live hours without electricity and with the cell phone downloaded. The answer to the question is not accurate and is full of quite a few conditionals.

4:28 However, the first thing I thought about was the very origin of the question, that is, why there is a possibility that that would happen. The explanations are several and all add up to fuel fear and headlines. The first applies to almost any sector of the world economy and is the effect that the invasion of Russia Ukraine had on the cost of gas and on the coal market. According to experts, weight assessment has also influenced, even though it has recovered a little. Of course, the drought that across the country at that time and that had the levels of the reservoirs in red numbers financial problems of the companies that are along the entire chain of generation and distribution of energy.

5:11 But what has been pointed out by several of these actors as one of the most crucial elements are the problems facing new energy generation projects in order to become operational. So, since this is what is known as a multifactorial problem, that is, it has several reasons, we' re going to go looking at them in parts. Problems in the energy sector did not start only one or two years ago. It has been a chain of decisions and factors, but the most affected, as we have almost always been the users. We are going back a few years to that sad time of the pandemic. In two thousand twenty, President Iván Duque implemented what is known as a tariff option, a mechanism to help alleviate the abrupt increase in the electricity tariff through the accumulation of exits, which the user will then pay in a wider period during the pandemic. The then President issued Decree Five hundred and seventeen urging the Regulatory Commission for Energy and Gas CREK to have temporary and extraordinary special schemes to defer payment of electricity bills for the covid 19 pandemic. This meant that residents of tier one and tier two homes could defer their electricity and fuel gas payments for up to thirty- six months. However, this measure has not been invented by the former Duke President since a thousand nine hundred and ninety- four and has been used by other presidents such asÁlvaro Urío and Juan Manuel Santos.

6:43 However, the last time the measure was used was the one that caused a stir from power generators and distributors to President Petro himself have reacted. Why I' m going to try and explain it. It happened that several electricity trading companies had to maintain this option of deferred payments to installments as an option of payment, even after January of two thousand twenty- two, until when it governed the mechanism. According to Medio Colombia Check, the director of the energy engineering program of the Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga César acevedo the measure was applied interchangeably by energy marketers as long as the user did not state that he did not want to accept it. And so far you will wonder how this affected the finances of the electricity distribution companies. Well, since I am an expert, I looked for Angélica Gómez, a journalist who founded economics for the Peopul to explain to me and this told me good. The tariff option is a mechanism that has been established in public services for several decades and that is used in times of emergency to avoid precisely situations such as the one of one thousand nine hundred ninety- two thousand nine hundred ninety- three s NS. I ' ll pay you in electric. In this opportunity it was applied in two thousand twenty in the pandemic to prevent a greater impact on the finances of Colombian households and in what I derive that was in a big debts that the companies have or rather that we have the consumers with the companies. That' s

8:18 calculated at about five billion at the moment alone for the Caribbean Coast is two five billion pesos and what it does is add the financial pressure to companies to face situations like the one we' re living now, the child phenomenon, which is a time of more expensive energy, that companies must buy and distribute and then charge people and, at the same time, continue to make the investments they need. The network to stay in good condition and that the quality of service in most of the country is maintained as it is in other regions, such as the Caribbean, as it continues to improve. In August last year, when the phenomenon of the child and the intense heat put the reservoir water reserves in red numbers, the Colombian Association of Electrical Energy Distributors to SOCODIS warned in a letter from the Minister of Miles de Energía, Andrés Camacho, and the director of the Energy and Gas Regulatory Commission, José Fernando Prada, that these financial problems of energy distribution companies are derived from the tariff option and other debts of state entities that are estimated at two billion pesos that aggravate the demand in cash flow and liquidity. What came next, of course, more than looking for a solution, was to look for a culprit and former President Duque, Diego Mesa' s former Minister of Energy Mines and President Petro began a discussion by throwing the hot Pope at each other. The fight was like that. He first attacked President Petro, who on his x account wrote a

9:50 long publication that the Presidency then resumed as a press release. I will read only a few layers to Euro Comillas. Fare action was created by Duque, in a similar way as he did with the deficit and the gasoline fund, but in electrical energy. It decided lower electricity rates than it should normally charge in covid times but it did so not from the utilities of the electricity sector, but as a debt of users that accumulated and that must now pay quotes. In addition, he said that energy marketing companies are, for the most part, public and to pay them they expect the Government to go up the tariffs above what should be charged to users normally, but in times of the child phenomenon. The former Minister Mesa, for his part, replied that at the end of his portfolio he had paid all the debts for subsidies caused by two thousand twenty- two thousand twenty- one for a value of approximately eight four million pesos. He also added that until July thirty- one of two thousand twenty- two, the balance of subsidius of electricity was five hundred seventy - four zero million pesos and not five billion pesos, as was to be believed. The former president Duque did not stand still, although his response, also through his account of x more than an argument, was an indirect and he repeated the publication of the supply of mines with the message brocomillas to the smoke curtains of populism. Once again, the truth gives them a lesson The

11:22 marketers are being broken by populism. But, as the magazine Cambio explains, those payments that the former Minister Mesa says, which were made, are part of the Ministry' s budget of billions of energy and are made by mandate of the law. The five million pesos that are at financial risk to energy distributors are part of the debt left by the tariff option and that the previous government did not pay. However, I think that the former President Duque had no choice other than to apply the tariff option. All this meant that, in addition to a possible blackout, an increase in the energy bill of all users was going to happen. The Cret' s response was the publication for comments of the draft resolution to intervene the prisoners of energy on the stock exchange during the phenomenon of the child, who sought quotation marks, to prevent the abuse of the dominant position of generators participating in the energy exchange and the consequent formation of an inefficient exchange price I close quotation marks. However, the criticisms did not wait, according to Alejandro Lucio, director of Optimal Consultores Aurocomillas, told Portfolio Alejandro Lucio, a price control that, regardless of whether it seeks to favor users, what it will do is to exhaust the water reserves to the bad ones and substantially increase the risk of rationing I close quotes. At this time, this decree has not been implemented. However, the CREG said that it has not archived it and continues to study it. This is also

12:54 a rather entangled subject. That' s why Ana Tal Gutierrez, president of the Colombian Suso of Energy Generators, called me to colqué for what she told me, why the decree of the CREE to regulate the price of energy is inconvenient. This answered me. We are at a time where there is a lot of uncertainty and where we have to build confidence again. The first thing is to have a Creo that works, because it has been the proactive regulation of this sector that has allowed us not to shut down. But, moreover, it is very important that there are signs of medium- and long- term public policy and norms to give us investor confidence. The approach to the amendment of the law one hundred and forty- two and one hundred and forty - three is worrying, because the stakes to be made in this sector are very long- term and if there is no certainty under which rules they will make it, it is very difficult to make these investments. Now add all the measures that have diminished the benefits of non- conventional renewables and add to this that projects that were planned and auctioned have not entered. The medium- term energy auction seems to have been cut short. Then we also call for a review of energy balances to ensure the attention of demand and give the signals of public policy so that the generation park expands and can maintain demand, which is growing in an important way in the country. Complaints about the price of

14:28 energy service in Colombia have been a constant, especially on the coast, but since last year the increase has been noticed more. In September of two thousand twenty- three, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development( OCTE) published figures on energy inflation for the month of July of that year, in which Colombia appears as the second country with the highest inflation twenty- two comma three percent and Hungary is the first. President Petro reacted to this data and said that I open Comillas is really a transfer of wealth from the bagels, from all Colombians and from the entire productive economy to six generators and two distributors rewarded by a formula of the CREK absurdly abushiva close Comillas. Paradoxically, according to the Atlantic Intergremial Committee, the decree of the crecte that we have just talked about would end up increasing by twenty- five percent of the energy tariffs on the Colombian Caribbean coast. For its part, the Colombian Association of Large Energy, Industrial and Commercial Consumers warned that the decree would end up transferring to consumers and users of the energy system a millionaire on cost of two four million pesos.

15:43 To the measure was also opposed the league of users of public services of the Caribbean. In fact, in November last year, the counteroria expressed its concern about the institutional vacuum of the CREC due to the lack of expert commissioners, which puts the Commission at imminent risk of blacking out institution and could end up affecting public finances and users' pockets. In Cristiano it means that the prices of the electricity will rise. About a month and a half ago, a decision of the Administrative Court of Cundinamarca ordered the Government to appoint the six expert commissioners that make up the Commission within no more than thirty days Today, the Government has appointed four experts, but only one of them on property.

16:27 Without these experts being appointed and taking up their duties, the Commission cannot take such important decisions as to avoid, for example, an event of blackout or an imminent rise in service prices in the face of the child. The concern about the rise in the price of energy is such that even the Attorney General got into the issue in her intervention at the event fair rates for the Caribbean. In January of this year he said you abrocomillas. Energy tariffs in this area of the country will be fair when charity services are provided at a rational cost and without discrimination, which will only be possible when there is an inter - institutional unit that allows a balance between economic sustainability and meeting the region' s energy needs. I' m closing Comillas. Let' s hear what the solicitor said about the creck and the energy prices on the coast. How many times all the citizens of the Caribbean Coast have not contributed in any way to some great works at the national level. Bogota Metro, Medellin Metro, and we could say many more good situations for the country, where the whole country has contributed for the benefit of a good work for a certain region.

17:45 But how painful it may be that once that solidarity is towards the Caribbean Coast, and what happens on the Caribbean Coast is a case apart, because they are the most affected by the high energy service and the most threatened by a possible blackout. A few days ago, the governor of the Atlantic, Eduardo Verano, referred to that problem and proposed that the invoices of Aire and Afinia companies, which today the end users assume, should be excluded. The Governor also stated that it was not negotiated and that no sensible person would have accepted that the chorus of such losses should be billed to the public. This is an old and complex problem that needs to be addressed differently from the rest of the country. In other words, the problem of energy costs on the coast must be solved as a case of solidarity and it must be the State that finances and the high costs and, in the midst of everything, this pull and loosen in which everyone wants fair rates and fair payments. Atlántico, Magdalena, Guajira, César, Córdoba and Sucre submitted a right of petition to the superintendence of services, with which they seek to sue the tariff formula established by the CREE. In response, according to them, to the cry of the people of the Costa for social justice, we seek Omar Prías, director of the CREC, to answer what must be done so that the end users are

19:15 not the ones who receive the energy price sauces. That' s what he said. The first thing we need to know is that in many regions electricity services with charges that have nothing to do with service are included in bills. For example, in some municipalities public lighting is charged and we charge for aspects of citizen security, toilet, aqueduct, choirs, electo, domesticos, seguros, funerarios. In short, some things that are not of the service of energy and that can influence the imagination of people believing that the invoice is only of the service of electricity. A recent measure of the crez may have the rates salsas for opsuntarifaria. It is also true that electricity companies have made long - term contrarys in order not to expose users to fluctuations in the stock exchange.

20:03 He believes her. It has a plan to review all components of the cost of the fee to look for possible exchange factors to reduce electricity service bills. I also looked for the Governor of Cordoba. You were musulette to ask why the Colombian coast needs differential energy prices. This one answered me to the Caribbean Coast, but in particular, our department of Cordoba must have differential rates in electricity or adjust the approved tariff structure to the operator that is Afinia. There are many reasons, but perhaps the most important is in our department we have two power generating companies Hurra and Ge about ninety- nine percent public capital.

20:53 Today we do not have a direct benefit from these companies. In our apartment we are at sea level. Climate conditions are therefore different from other regions. We support the highest temperatures and thermal sensations of our department that even exceed forty degrees Celsius. They are charging us investments, expansion of unexecuted network, they charge us losses without doing the respective management to avoid this loss. And we have the least reliable, most unstable and lowest quality service throughout the country. And what did the government say? Responses to all these so- called approaches and concerns have been several. In January, the Vice Minister of Energy Mines, Javier Campillo, said that there will not be an increase in tariffs and there will not be a blackout. Andrés Camacho, Minister of Mines and Energy, said that to Bro Comillas, according to the simulations and projections that the idea has, this period of February will be the hardest. We would then have a preparation for these conditions of two more months and the simulation we have of the reservoirs. If the national energy system today allows us to affirm that we have energy supply for the country, we can guarantee energy security by closing quotation marks. In January, CRETA tested a transitional and voluntary measure that allows the direct hiring of marketers and generators for a period of up to two years. According to Omar Prias, executive director of crec aurocomillas, typically twenty

22:25 percent of the country' s energy is traded on the stock market, while eighty percent is sold on pre- established contracts. During events like the child, stock exchange prices tend to increase significantly and suddenly with this initiative Our goal is to reduce this impact, so that users do not experience abrupt increases in their bills I close quotes. Meanwhile, in Congress there are three initiatives that seek to reduce energy tariff prices. One of them is that of the Congressmen of the Caribbean Bank. They eradicated a bill that seeks to regulate the cost of electricity. The text seeks to modify the tariff formulas in order to reach a point of equilibrium in favor of companies and users and in which technical and non- technical losses do not impact the pocket of Colombians who are assumed by the operator. On the other hand, Senator Gustavo Moreno led a clean energy project that seeks to create a third thermal floor to guarantee an equitable distribution of the minimum consumption of some Colombians. According to the Superintendent of Public Services, Dagoberto Quiroga, in a column published in a portfolio by Bro Comillas, the Constitution is explicit in that they are one of the areas of the economy in which the State must intervene and that regulation and inspection are the responsibility of the President of the Cierro Comillas Republic. In other words, the reform wants to

23:56 give more power to the President to regulate the public services of Tinoremente, last Tuesday, the Minister of Energy Mines and the Minister of Environments Use Mohammad, among other officials, were called to debate political control in plenary of the Senate to discuss the tariffs of energy and other public services. Minister Andrés Camacho said, among other things, not much more concrete than abrocomillas. The Government of change assumed with responsibility the task of achieving fair rates. We call for a national agreement for fair tariffs so that all political sectors can join efforts to protect the users who shut down comillas, the unions of energy generation and distribution, commandesco a coolgen andec a, socodis and naturgas, who have also done their part. And in a letter addressed to President Petro they sent him five proposals to lower users' energy rates in the Caribbean. The first is that the two five trillion pesos that the users of the Caribbean region have not paid to the companies for the option of NS tariff and allocate a billion pesos to the two providers of the energy service of the region to cover fifty percent of the value of the average component of losses over the next six months. The second proposal of the unions is that there be more conditions for new investments in current and future energy projects to enter the operation, to ensure availability of natural gas, better security conditions and to appoint the six experts commissioned from the CREC.

25:30 The third proposal is to take care of the energy service, to strengthen the penalties for energy theft, to reject any act that the citizens take against the infrastructure and to conduct an energy efficient campaign. The fourth proposal is the payment of the official debt and of constitutionally protected users, which amounts to about 350 billion pesos. And the fifth proposal is to reduce the value of local taxes, such as public lighting security tax. Every actor has his proposal and, although everyone seems to want the same thing, they do not agree on what is best. In conclusion, he wants to talk about the clean energy projects that the government promoted and that have been one of its campaign flags. In his speech during the opening of the solar park, with four hundred thousand panels on the Cesar hill, the President said that Bro Comillas, if we replace all thermoelectrics with clean energy. Automatically, the tariferectrica is lowered in Colombia by closing quotation marks. In an event on the subject, the Minister of Mines also questioned that in the last ten years it has not been possible to exceed two percent of non- conventional energy sources without considering hydroelectric power. And although wind and solar energy projects have advanced in their construction, their start- up and contribution of energy to the system has not been the expected, according to Acorgén data, of the megawatt capacity that was expected to contribute last year to

27:00 the market. With these two technologies, only five percent came in. That is, there is a big difference between what is expected of solar and wind energy projects and what they are contributing, and this for several reasons. Then there' s a chance there' s a blackout. According to estimates, not in the short term, but to follow the institutional vacuum in the belief that it cannot make decisions because it does not have all the experts. As long as new energy generation projects do not come into full operation and contribute what is expected, it may happen in about two or three years, unlike thirty - one years ago. This time all entities, companies and all actors related to electricity supply are aware of what can happen. If climate conditions, the non- implementation of new electricity generation projects and the financial crisis are not solved.

27:55 We can go back to a blackout. Fortunately, we are in time for the public and private sectors to work hand in hand to prevent it from happening, even if this means preventing the creation of another program such as the Lucierraga. I am Roberto Pombo and this was chapter seventy- nine of my questions. See you in the next chapter from now on. This chapter of my questions is available on all podcast platforms. This episode was made possible thanks to Kafam inspiring Smiles. Dirección Roberto Pombo, Producción General, Juan Abel Gutiérrez, Asesor editorial Daniel san Pero Espina scripts juan Abel Gutiérrez y Johnny Rodríguez, Producción de campo Marcela Salazar y Lucía Beltrán, postproducción de audio Carlos Bernar