Electricity is an indispensable resource to the daily life of human beings. Ever since the invention of the light bulb, having access to such resource has become an important part of the well being of humanity. In order to provide the amount needed by the entire world population, numerous ways of producing energy can be used. This has demanded mankind to have a broad knowledge of the workings of nature and its resources.

The methods of energy production have not always been the same, advances in science have allowed diversified the exploitation of natural resources, thus promoting the care of these. There is a big difference between these methods, especially concerning the costs of implementation. While some are easily accessible and have no cost, the maintenance process is complicated and expensive. On the other hand, there are those that are slightly more difficult to implement, but have lower operating costs.

Here we see how the Latin American countries provide energy to its people, not in terms of distribution, but of the sources used to meet the demand of each nation. Our purpose is to illustrate how the energy market has evolved in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and what are the possibilities to improve the supply of electricity to the people, since this has to be available to users 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Fossil Products Percentage:

Fossil fuels come from oil and petroleum products, gas and coal. They are the most used in the world and also the most polluting, however, they still have the lowest operating costs and are fortunately remain abundant on Earth, contrary to what some would say. There are large reserves of these in LAC, making it a market of great interest and great importance for the rest of the world, as demand in this category is the highest at this time. Since this is a continent where countries are still in development, fossil fuels provide electricity consistently, effectively and economically.

Let’s see the evolution of the use of fossil fuels in LAC. The grouping is purely arbitrary, there are no criteria to separate countries in this way, although coincidentally group 1 contains the most populous countries. The percentage shown is the fraction of total electricity use in each country.

Fossil Percentage

Clearly we see that energy consumption in LAC is supported mostly by fossil fuels. This shows the popularity and dependence on these resources to withstand high energy demand.

Percentage Alternative Energy:

Also known as clean energy, are the most favorable for the care of the planet, given the fact that they use renewable energy sources, such as water, the sun, the movement of the sea and rivers, the wind and the internal temperature of the earth. LAC has a high variety of landforms and hydrography, which makes it an ideal scenario to produce enough clean electricity; in addition, many of the countries are close to the Equator line, which means a constancy in the climatic conditions.

Alternative Percentage

It is clear to see how the use of alternative energy percentage has increased the over the years, but there are still countries that have a low percentage or even have. It???s good to see that LAC is introducing these new technologies in their energy scheme. Alternative energies are important resources that, although the initial cost of installation is a little higher than others, its maintenance and operation is very low because the fuel used is zero cost; recall these are fuels such as the wind, the sun, water and its movement. Furthermore, the access to these resources is not quite trivial, as mentioned earlier, the variation in climates directly affects how these resources are obtained; there are fortunate countries with easy access to these type of energy and others not so lucky. For example, a region may or may not have enough wind and another may have more or less solar radiation, and others may have greater or lesser rivers.

Percentage renewable energy:

Renewable fuels most commonly used are solid biomass, liquid biomass, biogas, industrial and municipal waste. LAC could implement large plants of these resources, but again, the installation costs increase and if there are not sufficient regulatory policies and incentives to exploit these resources, their development can not be done successfully.

Renewable percentage

According to the data, these resources are very present in the energy inventory of LAC, although clearly we see a slight decline in the use of these resources over time, but in general, you could say that its use has remained constant.

We can not conclude this data post without mentioning some important points about the data and its source. Since there are no entries reported in the table, the aggregation and weighting methods can present inconsistencies, such as a figure that is above 100%, which makes no sense. You can also see pronounced changes in behavior due to the weighting percentages with the unreported data. In general, the data are reliable and provide sufficient information to make a post like this.

Finally, we have seen that many countries are implementing new ways to generate electricity. However, most developing countries still do not have the capital resources necessary to achieve a higher percentage of clean energy. Electricity is a commodity that must be delivered in real time, the methods of storage and batteries are still young, very expensive and there is a lack of progress in this area, that’s why few can afford to use expensive and intermittent sources .

Everyone is interested in taking care of the planet but we must be aware that much of the energy we use every day still comes from fossil fuels, they are cheap and investment costs for implementation are low. Moreover, its operation is economic and depends on reliable sources, in the sense that they provide consistent and effective electricity to our homes. Best for countries is to have access to electricity immediately and consistently, and for this it is necessary to have different generation sources simultaneously.