Interview with the academic and director of Systep.

Hugh Rudnick “ENAP will be key in the development of the government’s energy agenda”.

“I think it is excellent that ENAP is once again a key player, as it was during the government of Ricardo Lagos”. This is how UC academic Hugh Rudnick values the new role that the state-owned company expects to adopt according to the energy agenda. The specialist was in favor of the navigation chart, however, he maintained that there are still some pending doubts.

What is your opinion on the agenda?
It is good, regardless of some issues that need to be changed, but I believe that in the case of goals and actions it is good. The only thing I’m not entirely happy with is the long-term prices.

Why?
I think the minister should have been more ambitious. He believes that in the next 10 years prices could be lowered from last year’s high benchmark by 25%; I believe that if we really developed the technologies that we could get, we could lower prices by more than 30%. He was a bit cautious there, and it is logical that he should be, because these are commitments that go beyond the government, but he would have been a bit more ambitious.

So LNG is the key?
ENAP will be key in the development of the energy agenda. Using LNG in terms of capacity that is idle and that today is generating with diesel seems perfect to me if that is the case. And that ENAP should be an instrument also seems to me a very good idea. But I think that starting with new LNG plants is not obvious, especially since prices are relatively high going forward.

What about other technologies?
To the extent that we can develop hydroelectric power, that will keep prices lower. Now, if it can be achieved with the consent of the communities, more coal-fired power plants would be great. That would allow us to lower the price even further.

And will land-use planning be key to this?
I think this is a fundamental issue. This point was missing in the strategies of the previous government, which only superficially talked about the conversation with communities, but did not talk about a vision of how to develop communities and visions for the future. However, this is obviously long term, all these things that are intended to be done will take a long time.