Windfarm resistance stalls green transition

In La Guajira, plans for renewables are beset by delays and anger from local Indigenous people

- Iñigo Alexander

A few years ago, as age began to take its toll, Rosa Velásquez decided it was time to retire from her restaurant in the coastal town of Cabo de la Vela and move back home. However, when she returned to her tiny rural community of Jotomana, on the arid plains of Colombia's northernmost tip, she found the place she and her ancestors had called home for generations littered with giant wind turbines.

Towering white turbines punctuate the horizon a few kilometres from Cabo de la Vela. The region, in the northern state of La Guajira, is home to all of Colombia's windfarms and its largest Indigenous population, the Wayúu.

"We live among turbines. The companies like them, but I don't. Where am I to go if this is my territory? What are my grandchildren going to do once I die?" asked Velásquez, a Wayúu herself, as goats roam around her property under the blistering sun.

La Guajira, Colombia's second-poorest state, has become the focal point and battleground of the government's proposed energy transition, a push to develop renewable energy sources and reduce its dependency on oil and coal to tackle the climate crisis.

According to La Guajira's chamber of commerce, the state has solar radiation levels 60% higher than the national average and wind speeds double the global norm. Private companies and Colombia's mines and energy ministry had sought to capitalise on these factors-even before Gustavo Petro's leftist government set out its ambitions for a "just energy transition".

The renewables sector could see investments reach $2.2bn this year, much of that being funnelled into the region. La Guajira has 17 renewable energy projects in development, with plans for dozens more to follow -including many offshore windfarms.