By Justine Calma , a senior science reporter covering energy and the environment with more than a decade of experience. She is also the host of Hel

What happens after your country runs on 99 percent renewable electricity?

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2024-04-24 14:00:04

By Justine Calma , a senior science reporter covering energy and the environment with more than a decade of experience. She is also the host of Hell or High Water: When Disaster Hits Home, a podcast from Vox Media and Audible Originals.

While most of the world still runs on dirty fossil fuels, Costa Rica has generated nearly all of its electricity from renewable sources of energy for nearly a decade. For comparison, the US generates just over 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources.

Costa Rica made global headlines in 2015 for generating 100 percent of its electricity from renewable energy for 75 days in a row. Today, it consistently gets around 99 percent of its electricity from renewables. Even so, it’s not a perfect system. Climate change poses new risks to the power grid, and Costa Rica has a lot of work left to do to get more solar and wind farms online.

The Verge spoke with Kenneth Lobo Méndez, director of planning and sustainability in electricity management, and Marco Jiménez Chavez, an engineer who works on generation expansion planning at the state-run electricity utility Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE). We wanted to know what’s led to the country’s success with renewable energy and what problems it has to troubleshoot now in a warming world.