President Boric announces the accelerated decarbonization bill

President Gabriel Buric announced on Sunday a draft accelerated decarbonization law, to comply with the commitments assumed by the country.

The president made the statement within the framework of Public Account 2025, held in Congress in Valparaíso.

“We have worked so that the care of the environment and sustainable development acquires a centrality in the state decisions, which implies changing the logics with which the State has acted for too long,” he said.

Matrix without coal

The president recalled that, in June 2019, President Sebastián Piñera launched a decarbonization plan, compromising the goal of a matrix without coal for the year 2040.

“That goal is difficult to meet under current conditions, but with conviction, with responsibility, collecting what has been worked by previous governments,” he said.

“I want to tell you that this challenge also opens a chance, because private investment, economic development and environmental care can converge and not compete,” he said.

“As long as there are more clean generation projects, we will be able to decarbonize before and attenuate the rise in rates. That is why I want to announce that during the second semester we will enter the draft of accelerated decarbonization to facilitate the investment projects that allow the end of the thermoelectricas for coal and collaboration, with the collaboration of all the sectors, we can not only comply with the goal established by President Piñera, By 2035 or before, depending on the institutional verification of the conditions for that.

Regarding the announcements of the President, the Minister of the Environment, Maisa Rojas pointed to The counter that “leaving it by law will make it binding and that gives more certainty.”

“Although our Law Framework of Climate Change, which is the Paragua, says that we are going to make carbonutral no later than 2050. This law is strengthened by that route because it defines that in the next 10 years, at the latest the coal thermoelectric plants should be closed, which is a climate commitment,” he added.

On the other hand, the Minister of Energy, Diego Pardow, said that “it is important to understand that the calendar that we currently have of 2040 is a calendar that basically supports in private instruments, were voluntary agreements that we adopted say the owners of the coal thermoelectric units, but that they do not have regulatory tools to ensure that this calendar is actually fulfilled.”

Climate change

In the issue of advances in the environment, President Boric also gave as an example the implementation of the Climate Framework Law, which sets the commitment to make a neutral carbon country to 2050, with the progressive decrease of the emissions caused by the climate crisis, “until they are equivalent to those that absorb our forests and oceans”.

“This will allow us to be prepared for the growing effects of the climatic crisis such as drought, heat waves, fire,” he said.

He added that in this same line goes the approval of the National Strategy for Fair Socio -End Transition.

“In addition, we have modernized environmental institutionality and I want to highlight the work to be able to get, after 12 years of processing, the new biodiversity service and protected areas.”

He added that, on the subject of protected areas, in these years the Government created 37 new, such as the Cochamó Valley, the Sea of ​​Pisagua, the Florido de Atacama desert and the Glacier Park in the Maipo drawer, which includes the Tupungato volcano.

This adds to the protection of the oceans, for example, with the entry into force of the administration plans of the protected marine areas of Rapa Nui and the archipelago of Juan Fernández “that, by the way, we will continue expanding, which reinforces our candidacy to which Valparaíso is the world of the world of the protection of the oceans.”