Around Latin America & Caribbean [12.10.14]

Peru

• Sun Powers a Peruvian Energy Shift (Wall Street Journal)

"Lima, Hosting Climate Talks, Aims for Rural Solar Energy Program;

For time immemorial, life hardly changed in this rugged corner of the Andes, where men toil in potato fields and women knit the wool ponchos needed for cold mountain nights 11,500 feet above sea level. 

But an energy revolution has arrived, allowing villagers to tap the bright blue sky of the Peruvian sierra and use solar energy to power their small, adobe homes.
“It has changed our lifestyle,” said José Tello. 

Scattered throughout remote Cajamarca state, 3,900 homes were granted solar panels, a model for a rural electrification program that President Ollanta Humala hopes will reach two million people in 500,000 homes in isolated villages throughout the Andean highlands and Amazon rain forest by 2018. About a third of Peru’s rural population has no electricity."