Chile: Leading the Path on Solar Energy
Join the Santiago Global Center and the Center on Global Energy Policy for a discussion on the future of solar energy. Clara Bowman, General Manager of AME; Carlos Finat, Executive Director of ACERA; and Gabriel Prudencio, Head of Sustainable Energies Division at the Chilean Ministry of Energy, will join a panel to explore how public policy, industry, and public sentiment can shape the future of solar energy, and how, using Chile as a model, these strategies and lessons can be applied throughout the world.
THE PANEL
Clara Bowman, General Manager of AME (Independent Power Producer based in Santiago) is an Australian lawyer who has developed mainly in the area of energy. Prior to joining AME, Clara worked for several years in Perth, Australia, as a corporate law attorney at Freehills, a prestigious Australian firm, where she specialized in acquisitions, mergers and other transactions in the energy and natural resources sectors. AME, in partnership with Electricity of France, holds a diversified portfolio of thermal and renewable assets, including the 115 MW Santiago Solar project located on the northern edge of the city of Santiago. AME has an aggressive growth strategy which contemplates the construction or acquisition of 600 MW of additional renewable capacity by 2022. Before moving to Chile to join AME in 2010, Clara worked at Freehills, an Australian law firm.
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Carlos Finat, Executive Director, ACERA is an Electrical Engineer from the University of Chile. He has an extensive professional experience developed in the energy, mining, information technology, defense and automation industries. Finat has a solid experience in the electricity regulation sector, regulatory and operational framework of the Independent System Coordinator, power supply tenders, negotiation of power and LNG contracts, and GHG emissions and energy management, among others. He was member of the Executive Committee of Energy Scenarios (2013-2014) and Scenarios Building Group of MAPS Chile (2009-2015). In 2014, invited by the Ministry of Energy, he joined the Energy 2050 Advisory Council, which was in charge -during 2015 - of drafting a roadmap, which was the main input for the country´s Long Term Energy Policy, announced by the Ministry of Energy at the end of that year. In September 2012 he joined ACERA A.G. as its Executive Director. He is member of the External Advisory Committee of the Department of Electrical Engineering of the University of Chile. In 2019, he was designated as COP25 Ambassador by the Chilean Department of the Environment.
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Gabriel Prudencio is the Head of Sustainable Energies Division at the Chilean Ministry of Energy. From 2014 until joining the Ministry, he was the operations manager of Valhalla, a company that develops hydraulic pumping stations and photovoltaic plants in northern Chile. During 2012 and 2013 Gabriel worked at UGE International in New York participating in the development of wind and solar energy projects at the scale of distributed generation. Previously, he was part of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning as a member of the reconstruction committee following the 2010 earthquake as well as part of the Techo Foundation where he served in various general management positions. Prudencio Flaño earned his undergraduate degree in civil engineering from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and a master’s degree in public administration from Columbia University.
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This event is part of a yearlong 10-event series celebrating the Columbia Global Centers' 10th anniversary. Click here to learn about the other events in this series.