A column by Dr. Dave Renné, ISES President
Solar World Congress Delivers Key Message on Addressing Social Issues with Renewable Energy
Just days before the launch of our Solar World Congress 2019 in Chile, serious civil unrest broke out in Santiago and other major cities. The unrest was stimulated by a metro fare hike, which may have seemed small to many of us, but became a stark symbol of the significant income inequality that exists in Chile, and the government’s passivity in addressing this inequality. The unrest was at times violent, and sadly dozens of Chileans lost their lives and hundreds more suffered debilitating injuries. Untold millions of dollars in damage was wreaked upon critical public facilities such as metro stations, banks, and stores.
ISES together with our Congress partner, the IEA Solar Heating and Cooling Programme, and our local hosts in Chile, struggled with how best to respond to the situation. Of course, the safety of our guests planning to attend the Congress were upmost in our mind, and we deliberated on a near-daily basis on whether and how to go forward with the Congress. After the first week of unrest the government took steps to ameliorate the situation by beginning to address the many economic, political, and social demands of the protesters, removing the army from the streets, and eliminating the curfew. Even so, the protests continued sporadically, but in Santiago were largely confined to the downtown area, and fortunately far removed from the location of the Congress venue. For sure our local hosts, the Solar Energy Research Center (SERC) of Chile, who had put years of effort into organizing the Congress, considered every possible scenario if the Congress were to go forward, with safety being the tantamount consideration. |
