Scientists and academics will draw up a roadmap to “decarbonize” the Galapagos Islands

Scientists and academics from various countries will discuss a roadmap to achieve the “decarbonization” of the Galapagos Islands and achieve the goal of the energy transition in harmony with the development of the local population and tourism, its main economic activity.

The “Sustainable and Inclusive Decarbonization Summit of the Galapagos Islands” will gather from Monday to Wednesday experts and specialists around this objective on the island of San Cristóbal, the easternmost of the archipelago and one of the four populated islands of the archipelago.

The meeting will take place under the umbrella of the initiative “Galapagos Living Lab for Energy Innovation”, a space for action where opinion leaders and key actors from different sectors participate, created by the COP26 world summit by the Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), the University of Edinburgh (Scotland) and the Ecuadorian-British Chamber of Commerce.

This forum will seek to understand the conditions and challenges of the Galapagos with a view to the energy transition and will explore both ongoing research and local initiatives aimed at this challenge.

Among the axes of the meeting will be energy resources and infrastructure, energy security and resilience, investment analysis and facilitation, energy efficiency and energy for transport, among others.

Thus, evaluations will be made of renewable energy systems to support the supply of water, energy and food and the possibility of carrying out maritime transport with electric motor boats or that use green hydrogen as fuel.

The scientific advances of current research projects developed through the association of the University of Edinburgh and USFQ will also be presented, within the initiative “Galapagos Living Lab for Energy Innovation”.

Additionally, there will be presentations by researchers from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the Oak-Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL-USA).

Participants will include state authorities, representatives of the Galapagos National Park, the Ministries of Energy and Environment, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Ecuadorian-British Chamber of Commerce, as well as companies, local leaders and students.

In addition, the Clean Energy Technology career will be launched through an agreement between USFQ, the IDB and the Ministry of Energy and Mines.

Located about a thousand kilometers west of the continental coast of Ecuador, the Galapagos are considered a natural laboratory, the same one that allowed the English scientist Charles Darwin, in the 19th century, to develop his theory on the natural selection of species.

This archipelago, made up of 13 large islands, 6 smaller ones and 107 islets and rocks, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978 and is the second largest marine reserve on the planet, considered one of the best preserved globally. , as well as the main tourist attraction in Ecuador.

Source: EFE