{"id":68467,"date":"2024-06-03T19:10:28","date_gmt":"2024-06-04T00:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68467"},"modified":"2024-06-03T19:10:28","modified_gmt":"2024-06-04T00:10:28","slug":"ecuador-is-literally-powerless-in-the-face-of-drought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68467","title":{"rendered":"Ecuador Is Literally Powerless in the Face of Drought"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ecuador Is Literally Powerless in the Face of Drought<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Drought-stricken hydro dams have led to daily electricity cuts in Ecuador. As weather becomes less predictable due to climate change, experts say other countries need to take notice.<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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PHOTOGRAPH: FEDERICO RIOS ESCOBAR\/REDUX PICTURES<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
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Ecuador is in trouble: Drought has shrunk its reservoirs, and its hydroelectric dams have had to power down. The government has been forced to cut electricity to homes for hours at a stretch, and in mid-April, President Daniel Noboa declared a\u00a060-day state of emergency<\/a>. Since then, homeowners have been taking cold showers and struggling without internet access, while restaurants have been serving up meals by candlelight to avoid closing and losing perishable food. For businesses, that\u2019s the worst, says Etiel Solorzano, a Quito-based tour guide for Intrepid Travel. \u201cThree hours of no power? You can go bankrupt for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some days, the power outages have lasted up to eight hours or more, says Juan Sebasti\u00e1n Proa\u00f1o Aviles, a sustainability coordinator and mechanical engineering professor at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito. Things have improved a little\u2014power cuts are now\u00a0no longer<\/a>\u00a0a daily occurrence\u2014but Proa\u00f1o Aviles expects sporadic energy shortages to continue for years. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be a problem,\u201d he says. \u201cWe have to do something pretty fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

In regions that receive most of their precipitation in a short period each year\u2014like Ecuador, Southeast Asia, and the American West\u2014reservoirs have historically been effective at storing water. (In Ecuador and Southeast Asia, a rainy season contrasts a dry season, while the American West gets heavy snow during fall and winter.) Managing agencies can then gradually release the stored water throughout the year to generate power as needed. This dependability helped make hydropower the\u00a0largest renewable electricity source<\/a>\u00a0in the world.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the day…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ecuador Is Literally Powerless in the Face of Drought Drought-stricken hydro dams have led to daily electricity cuts in Ecuador. As weather becomes less predictable due to climate change, experts say other countries need to take notice. PHOTOGRAPH: FEDERICO RIOS ESCOBAR\/REDUX PICTURES Ecuador is in trouble: Drought has shrunk its reservoirs, and its hydroelectric dams […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[220,8739,34672,11566,2007],"class_list":["post-68467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-drought","tag-ecuador","tag-hannah-singleton","tag-hydroelectric-power","tag-wired"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68467"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68468,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68467\/revisions\/68468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}