Amanecer Solar SpA built its photovoltaic plant in the Atacama Desert in a joint arrangement with mining company CAP Group. It mainly supplies the latter’s Cerro Negro Norte iron ore mine.
Photographer: Jamey StillingsThese Massive Renewable Energy Projects Are Powering Chilean Mines
A surge in solar, geothermal, and wind development is helping to wean the industry off imported fossil fuels.
Minerals are so abundant in Chile’s northern Atacama Desert, you can get copper just by kicking the mountain—or so says one of the miners’ favorite proverbs. A century after many of the mines there were first opened, finding copper—or gold, or lithium, or iron ore—isn’t that easy. The concentration of minerals in the earth decreases as the miners dig deeper, meaning companies need to process more ore to extract the same amount of metal, a messy and highly polluting process to begin with. To fuel that effort, they need vast amounts of energy.
Chile has little in the way of fossil fuels, leading it to rely on imports and making electricity there extremely expensive. In 24 of the last 30 years, the country’s energy prices were higher than the world average; at its peak in 2011, the price per kilowatt-hour reached $150.90, almost double the global average.