A surge in solar, geothermal, and wind development is helping to wean the industry off imported fossil fuels.
Minerals are so abundant in Chile’s northern Atacama Desert, you can get copper just by kicking the mountain—or so says one of the miners’ favorite proverbs. A century after many of the mines there were first opened, finding copper—or gold, or lithium, or iron ore—isn’t that easy.
The concentration of minerals in the earth decreases as the miners dig deeper, meaning companies need to process more ore to extract the same amount of metal, a messy and highly polluting process to begin with. To fuel that effort, they need vast amounts of energy.
Chile has little in the way of fossil fuels, leading it to rely on imports and making electricity there extremely expensive. In 24 of the last 30 years, the country’s energy prices were higher than the world average; at its peak in 2011, the price per kilowatt-hour reached $150.90, almost double the global average.
In 2013, Chile passed a law mandating that 20 percent of its energy come from renewable sources by 2025, leading to a surge in renewable energy projects. While the popularity of wind and solar energy has increased globally as costs have fallen, Chile in particular has geography on its side.
Atacama is the world’s driest desert and receives more solar radiation than almost any other spot on Earth. Strong winds blowing in from the Pacific coast and the Andes Mountains also make it ideal for wind power.
For the rest of this article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-07/these-massive-renewable-energy-projects-are-powering-chilean-mines