Ecuador rations electricity as drought persists in the northern Andes

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Ecuador on Tuesday began to ration electricity in the country's main cities as a drought linked to the El Niño weather pattern depletes reservoirs and limits output at hydroelectric plants that produce about 75 per cent of the nation's power.

The power cuts were announced on Monday night by the ministry of energy, which said in a statement that it would review its decision on Wednesday night.

"We urge Ecuadorians to cut their electricity consumption in this critical week," the statement read. "And consider that each kilowatt and each drop of water that are not consumed will help us face this reality."

The power cuts in Ecuador come days after dry weather forced Colombia's capital city of Bogotá to ration water as its reservoirs reached record lows, threatening local supplies of tap water.

In the town of La Calera, on the outskirts of Bogotá, water trucks visited neighbourhoods where water has been scarce recently because a local stream that supplies the town with water is drying up. Local residents lined up outside the water trucks with buckets to collect as much as they could carry.

"I'm worried about what's happening," said Carlos Arturo Rueda, a 72-year-old who was gathering water from the truck. "We need to do more to preserve this precious liquid."

Precipitation has diminished in Ecuador and Colombia this year due to warming temperatures in the south Pacific Ocean, which can cause floods along South America's west coast but can also generate intense droughts in the Andean valleys, where many of Ecuador's and Colombia's main cities are located.

In Colombia, where hydroelectric plants are also struggling, officials said on Tuesday that they are considering awarding tax credits to companies that reduce their electricity consumption.

During the first week of April Colombia suspended electricity exports to Ecuador in an attempt to save energy for domestic needs. Colombia gets around 70 per cent of its electricity from hydroelectric plants.

Camilo Prieto, a climate change professor at Bogotá's Javeriana University, said that the current spell of dry weather is not as extreme as previous droughts related to El Niño, such as a drought that caused power cuts in Colombia in the early 1990s. But he added that demand for electricity has grown over the years in Colombia and Ecuador, while these countries have made the "mistake" of continuing to rely on hydroelectric power.

"The world has learned that an energy mix that is diverse and combines different kinds of low-emission sources is safer and more reliable," Prieto said. "If demand continues to grow and the energy mix in these countries is not diversified, they will continue to be vulnerable."

On Tuesday newspapers around Ecuador published schedules for power cuts in cities that included Quito, Cuenca and Guayaquil, where most homes and many businesses were left without power for three hours.

Ecuador had also experienced power cuts, related to droughts in October, January and February.

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