The geologist Osiris de León urged the Government to continue supporting the private sector for the conversion of its units of electricity generation that work with petroleum derivatives, so that from now on all these generation units will operate with natural gas, since natural gas constitutes a cleaner energy, more friendly to the environment and much cheaper, for that way “to continue overcoming the erratic energy management of the past and meet the global objectives of reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions”.
positively assessed the operations of the Eastern Pipeline and the company ENERGAS, the latter owner of a plant made up of three turbines with a power of 100MW each, and which operate with natural gas, as well as Quisqueya I and Quisqueya II, which has made it possible to greatly reduce CO2 emissions into the atmosphere and get closer as a nation to the goal to which the country has committed at the Summits of the Parties (COP) of reducing its carbon dioxide emissions to help curb global warming.
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“That is why plants such as ENERGAS, Quisqueya I and Quisqueya II, which between the three add up to about 730 megawatts, are an ideal solution for a society like the Dominican one because they replace old fuels that provided greater volumes of carbon dioxide and now use natural gas, via a gas pipeline that goes from Boca Chica to San Pedro de Macorís, which has been an extraordinary investment made at the ideal time, when the world begins to look at natural gas as an ideal solution in terms of energy. Consequently, this solution is representing a response to the nation in the economic order and in the environmental order, and it is what the whole society should salute because in the future all the energy will be produced under a scheme similar to that”, he said.
The geologist explained that given the positive results that the dominican society with the conversion of power park plants that are currently using natural gas with excellent results in terms of costs and benefits to the environment.
“It is necessary to suggest to the Dominican State, as well as to the private sector, to make investments to transform all those plants of the thermal system that to date have not been transformed so that in the future they will be using natural gas because natural gas is much more clean, it emits less carbon dioxide, and the economic result is positive both for the Government and for the private sector that produces the energy and for the user who will end up buying energy at the lowest cost”.
Osiris de León maintained that the annual reduction of greenhouse gases in the operations of the natural gas power plants of the ENERGAS company is of the order of 265 thousand tons of CO2and if the operations of the Quisqueya I and Quisqueya II power plants are added to this, which have also been transformed to operate with natural gas and each one saves about 245 thousand tons of CO2 per year, the benefits to the environment increase, since Between the three plants, they save around 750,000 tons of CO2 annually, equivalent to planting 25 million trees to capture CO2 or removing 300,000 vehicles from daily traffic that emit CO2 through their exhaust pipes. They go into the atmosphere and the The Dominican Republic’s commitment when signing the Summit of the Parties is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
The geologist acknowledged that the country has made significant progress in energy matters by converting several plants that previously operated with liquid fuels and now operate with natural gas, while valuing the years of work, the enormous effort and the high economic investments made by the companies that introduced modifications in their power plants to be able to operate with natural gas, since they make a strategic contribution to the country’s economy and lower the costs of energy received by consumers.
He stated that the National Interconnected Electric System (SENI), As a whole, it has to focus on practices that take into account the environmental sustainability of the electricity sector, reducing CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, since CO2 is the main greenhouse gas, which, to date, registers a global concentration of the order of 420 parts per million in our atmosphere, and that high concentration of CO2 is contributing to a greater amount of storms and hurricaneswith long droughts that reduce food production and endanger the food sustainability of society, and with dangerous heat waves that, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), generate complications of cardiovascular diseases in elderly people .
The expert explained that natural gas is not very polluting because it has a very clean combustion since it is made up of 95% methane gas (CH4), so it does not emit solid particles such as PM10 and PM2.5 that affect air quality. and the human respiratory system.
He added that natural gas is used as it is extracted, that is, it does not require any transformation process as required by propane or butane gas.
