Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe one of the reasons is they don't have defense spending per-se. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Force_of_Costa_Rica#His... They let the US handle all of that for them, and they spend funds on power. This isn't to say that they're an infrastructure paradise. A region I visited had poor roads and internet connectivity.
Reminds me of an old communist joke/jab at the capitalists' expense: "A small African country's cabinet is meeting to come up with solutions for the bleak economic situation. One minister says: 'I know! Let's declare war on the United States! After they invade us they will have to support us.' Everyone murmurs in agreement at the clever plan. However one last minister is not convinced and says: 'But... what if we win…
Costa Rica Has Run on 100% Renewable Electricity for 299 Days
151–160 of 305 posts
Re: Costa Rica Has Run on 100% Renewable Electricity for 299 Days
#152In fact you could say it is running on 300% renewable electricity, because it has large Hydro electric dam, exports around 70% of what it generates to Brazil and Argentina and only uses 30% itself.
Re: Costa Rica Has Run on 100% Renewable Electricity for 299 Days
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
The book "Why Nations Fail" and the followup by the same authors "The Narrow Corridor" paints a fairly convincing picture that the success or failure of many modern Latin American countries is directly correlated with the extent to which the Spanish colonialists were able to enslave/subjugate the indigenous population, and the types of societies and institutions that followed that initial seed. For example, in modern…
`you can overlay a Spanish colonial map detailing how much forced labor must be performed in each region with a modern poverty map and there is still a high degree of correlation.` Could this be partially attributed the geography, natural resources available in the region. AKA both the Spanish Empire and contemporary society saw the same poverty inducing industries available in those regions?
"""
At this point the Spanish focused on the people of the Inca Empire. [..] Citizens were divided into encomiendas, with one going to each of the conquistadors [..]. The encomienda was the main institution used for the control and organization of labor in the early colonial period, but it soon faced a vigorous contender.
In 1545 a local named Diego Gualpa was searching for an indigenous shrine high in the Andes in what is today Bolivia. He was thrown to the ground by a sudden gust of wind and in front of him appeared a cache of silver ore. This was part of a vast mountain of silver, which the Spanish baptized El Cerro Rico, “The Rich Hill.” Around it grew the city of Potosí, which at its height in 1650 had a population of 160,000 people, larger than Lisbon or Venice in this period.
To exploit the silver, the Spanish needed miners [..]. They sent a new viceroy [..] Francisco de Toledo, whose main mission was to solve the labor problem. [..] To find the labor he needed, de Toledo first moved almost the entire indigenous population, concentrating them in new towns called reducciones — literally “reductions” — which would facilitate the exploitation of labor by the Spanish Crown. Then he revived and adapted an Inca labor institution known as the mita, which, in the Incas’ language, Quechua, means “a turn.”
Under their mita system, the Incas had used forced labor to run plantations designed to provide food for temples, the aristocracy, and the army. [..] In de Toledo’s hands the mita, especially the Potosí mita, was to become the largest and most onerous scheme of labor exploitation in the Spanish colonial period. De Toledo defined a huge catchment area, running from the middle of modern-day Peru and encompassing most of modern Bolivia. [..] The Potosí mita endured throughout the entire colonial period and was abolished only in 1825. Map 1 shows the catchment area of the mita superimposed on the extent of the Inca empire at the time of the Spanish conquest. It illustrates the extent to which the mita overlapped with the heartland of the empire, encompassing the capital Cusco.
Remarkably, you still see the legacy of the mita in Peru today. Take the differences between the provinces of Calca and nearby Acomayo. There appears to be few differences among these provinces. Both are high in the mountains, and each is inhabited by the Quechua-speaking descendants of the Incas. Yet Acomayo is much poorer, with its inhabitants consuming about one-third less than those in Calca. [..] In Calca and Acomayo, people grow the same crops, but in Calca they sell them on the market for money. In Acomayo they grow food for their own subsistence. These inequalities, apparent to the eye and to the people who live there, can be understood in terms of the institutional differences between these departments — institutional differences with historical roots going back to de Toledo and his plan for effective exploitation of indigenous labor. The major historical difference between Acomayo and Calca is that Acomayo was in the catchment area of the Potosí mita. Calca was not.
[..] Throughout the Spanish colonial world in the Americas, similar institutions and social structures emerged. After an initial phase of looting, and gold and silver lust, the Spanish created a web of institutions designed to exploit the indigenous peoples. [..] Though these institutions generated a lot of wealth for the Spanish Crown and made the conquistadors and their descendants very rich, they also turned Latin America into the most unequal continent in the world and sapped much of its economic potential.
Re: Costa Rica Has Run on 100% Renewable Electricity for 299 Days
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, we don't have any special design for our homes. It's just that we have lots of energy for our small country, all from our hydro plants and our volcanos, we have so much energy that we sell it to 6 more countries in the central America region.
Thank you for replying Vernacular design is just very localized design using local materials and suited to local weather. It's like adobe homes in the American Southwest and igloos in Alaska. What is a typical home like there? How are they heated and cooled?
My house doesn’t have any heating but does have mini-split AC units in the bedroom that we usually run for 3 hours in the afternoon if someone is going to sleep in that room.
There is a concept of having a ceiling fan next to some windows at the top of the wall near the roof. The idea is to have the fan pull the hot air up and out that window, creating a nice draft. Usually you have this in the main living area. They have a name for this that escapes me at the moment.
Re: Costa Rica Has Run on 100% Renewable Electricity for 299 Days
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
four brownouts a day is an instant kill for industry despite that you're okay with it, most heavy users of power aren't the reason they're omitting this from the reporting is that the reporting just isn't true
Depends entirely on the length of the brownouts and the type of industry, there are long-proven fallback and standby options that can smooth out temporary blips (or just clean dirty power in general) that allow 'industry' to work just about anywhere in the world. The bigger issue in Costa Rica is that they aren't actively courting heavy industry, so their power is very expensive for commercial users -- nearly $0.20/k…
Re: Costa Rica Has Run on 100% Renewable Electricity for 299 Days
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, we don't have any special design for our homes. It's just that we have lots of energy for our small country, all from our hydro plants and our volcanos, we have so much energy that we sell it to 6 more countries in the central America region.
Thank you for replying Vernacular design is just very localized design using local materials and suited to local weather. It's like adobe homes in the American Southwest and igloos in Alaska. What is a typical home like there? How are they heated and cooled?
Re: Costa Rica Has Run on 100% Renewable Electricity for 299 Days
#15770-80% Hydro [~90% Hydro+Geothermal]. ~10% wind and almost no PV. It's important to keep in mind that wind and solar aren't really a part of this success story.
California does not consider hydro to be renewable, so according to California law Costa Rica has not been running on renewable energy. This is to point out California needs to redefine hydro into a renewable resource.
Re: Costa Rica Has Run on 100% Renewable Electricity for 299 Days
#158Is there an easy answer as to why Costa Rica is doing so well? They seem to be a bit of an exception in Central/South America. EDIT: From Wikipedia "It is known for its long-standing and stable democracy, and for its highly educated workforce, most of whom speak English. The country spends roughly 6.9% of its budget (2016) on education, compared to a global average of 4.4%. Its economy, once heavily dependent on agri…
Re: Costa Rica Has Run on 100% Renewable Electricity for 299 Days
#159> Update 3/17/2021: Our original article stated "Costa Rica Has Run on 100% Renewable Energy for 299 Days." It was pointed out to us that while Costa Rica's electric grid does run primarily on renewable energy, a better title would have been "Costa Rica Has Run on 100% Renewable Electricity". Below the article says that the government had not burned any oil to power the country, but this would technically imply that the government does not own gasoline powered vehicles, which couldn't be true.
Accounting for the origins of energy is tricky business. Want to squeeze out internal combustion engines? Go electric. Where do the batteries come from, and how much non-renewable energy does it cost to produce them? For that matter, how many goods are important with non-neglibile carbon footprints? Because carbon emissions can be exported.
> In other words, a country can be considered carbon neutral while still using fossil fuels by planting trees that offset the carbon, or funding conservation programs which aim to reduce the amount of carbon in the air.
How long do those trees you're planting keep CO2 out of the atmosphere? When they die, a good chunk of that carbon may be released.
Re: Costa Rica Has Run on 100% Renewable Electricity for 299 Days
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
California does not consider hydro to be renewable, so according to California law Costa Rica has not been running on renewable energy. This is to point out California needs to redefine hydro into a renewable resource.
Why ? is there a stated reason