This week the VII Congress of the Alianza por Iberoamérica Business Council, Ceapi, is being held. who arrived for the first time in Colombia. Among those invited to this business meeting is Enrique Riquelme, executive president of the Spanish renewable energy group Coxabengoa, who spoke on Inside LR about the investments he is preparing for Colombia.
What does Coxabengoa do?
Coxabengoa is a company that I founded in 2014 as Cox. We have been developing solar energy projects in Latin America since 2012, mainly from Panama, Central America and then Chile and Mexico. Since then, we have worked our entire career in solar energy and a little over a year ago we had the opportunity to acquire the company, also Spanish, Abengoa, specialized in water and energy and we have already managed to complete the integration of both.. Now we are Coxabengoa as a group and, in one definition, we work as a water and energy utility.
Is there interest in making investments in the region?
Latin America is a very important market. Although I am Spanish, I have been living here for about 12 or 13 years. TI am heartbroken in these two markets and where we feel very comfortable.
So much so that today we are in 34 countries, and in the new investment plan we have for 2024-2027a large part is focused on investing in water and energy projects in Latin America and, of course, in Colombia, one of the main markets.
Where is Colombia most interesting?
The country, as such, has water resources, the energy matrix, now with Hidroituango, has a very important new generation capacity. Colombia is very fortunate geographically to be in a place where there is good solar radiation to generate energy, the cheapest in Latin America, where it has good use of the wind side and where it also has a lot of hydrology. So Colombia has a very good future forecast.
How much do you plan to invest in the country?
We have been here in the country for several years now, we are in energy generation, we develop more than 2 gigabytes of photovoltaic solar energy and we are looking at some projects to be able to buy, that are already operational or under construction to be able to invest more than US$300 million in energy and water in the next three years. It is a minimum of US$300 million in existing projects that we provide in addition to those we have.
In what region?
We have projects in the part of Bolívar, in Santander, in Boyacá. Those are the main ones, We have projects throughout the country and we have more than 2 gigabytes distributed in about 29 projects approximately.
In what time?
It is approximately US$120 million in these next 12 months and we will continue investing in the next 24 months to have it all invested. That’s around US$320 million.
What is the challenge that Colombia has in terms of renewable energy?
Colombia is growing a lot in the energy demand that the region needs. It has the capacity, not only for consumption, but also for exporting energy to neighboring countries.. It has the size to be able to do it.
How many employees do you have at that time?
We, as a group, have about 11,500 employees. It varies depending on the projects we have in the 34 countries. In the Colombian market our goal is to be able to have about 400 or 500 employees, once the projects start construction.
