Rome, Italy - July, 14th 2011
Rome July 14th 2011 - UNIDO ITPO Italy, in the effort to promote investment and technology transfer, organized the meeting with Mr. Fernando Omar Salim - Director General of the Argentinean ENARSA Group, which had the pleasure to present Argentina’s investment opportunities in the field of Renewable Energies.
UNIDO ITPO recognizes the priority to support developing countries in their drive to promote clean energy and compliance to international conventions, through the identification of innovative and eco-friendly technologies, and specific investment opportunities.
The meeting was attended by a group of Italian companies active and interested in renewable energies and which count on significant experiences both in the design and construction of mini hydro, solar, geothermal energy projects and energy storage techniques implying the use of energy accumulators. The participating firms had the opportunity to achieve important information from Mr. Salim in regards of modalities and application procedures for call for tenders or for spontaneous project proposals. Companies have also achieved key information on Argentina’s provinces mostly sensible to renewable energies.
ENARSA is a Government created Company in charge of managing contracts in the energy sector as well as having the possibility of establishing joint ventures and creating international partnerships for specific projects in respect of alternative energy sources (wind, photovoltaic, solar, geothermal, hydropower, biomass, biogas and solid waste treatment).
Currently ENARSA is highly interested in promoting investment opportunities and technology transfer to enable high quality projects development in Argentina. In particular ENARSA focuses on the following strategic areas: wind power, small solar power plants aimed at sustaining rural and remote locations, mini hydro, forestry biomass, bio-fuels produced from soybean processing and sugar waste cogeneration processes.
Jujuy, Salta, Catamarca, La Rioja and San Juan Provinces are potential future sites for renewable energies development for which ENARSA has already conducted feasibility studies. As for mini hydro projects, however, specific requests from Cordoba and Salta Provinces have been advanced. Most of the projects, as they now stand, cover areas close to the national power grid, though, as noted by Mr. Salim, it would be important to develop projects in remote areas with adequate stand-alone systems that can ensure the storage of produced energy.
During the meeting, ENARSA encouraged Italian businessmen to explore these opportunities in Argentina and to present concrete projects for the production of clean energy, thus also contributing to bridge Argentina’s energy deficit which is currently of 2500 MW. "Being aware of the Italian industrial excellence achievements in renewable energies, ENARSA ensures a full assistance to those entrepreneurs that will submit high quality projects" Mr. Salim said.