Santiago breathes better air. Considered one of the most polluted cities in Latin America, the Chilean capital has reduced pollution like never before since it began taking measurements in 1997. How did you do it?
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Enclosed between hills, Santiago is transformed in the southern winter into a great pressure cooker. The low temperatures and less ventilation prevent polluting gases from circulating, which cover the city with a dense gray layer. The most critical period is between May and August.
But this year, in the same period, it registered its lowest contamination rate since 1997, when it began with the measurements. In 2023 there were 17 alert episodes compared to 50 in 2015, the most contaminated in the last eight years.
The city where close to half of the 19 million Chileans live, and which according to measurements by the Swiss company IQAir is the most polluted capital in Latin America, installed a vast network of monitoring stations.
“If you don’t measure the problem, you’re hardly going to solve it,” Marcelo Mena, former environment minister and professor at the Catholic University of Valparaíso, told AFP.
Based on these measurements, which few countries in Latin America make, Santiago adopts measures when pollution reaches levels that are dangerous to health: the movement of cars is restricted and the most polluting factories are paralyzed, among other actions.
Throughout Chile, it is estimated that air pollution by fine particulate matter causes around 3,000 hospitalizations and close to 4,500 deaths per year.
Mena estimates that Santiago reduced its pollution between 70 and 75% in the last three decades.
focused measurements
The measurement is focused. At the Ichuac kindergarten, a public kindergarten in the municipality of Peñalolén, in eastern Santiago, two low-cost monitors measure air quality.
“We make decisions based on the information they give us,” says its director Alejandra Urrutia.
If the indicator is red, it means that the contamination has reached a degree of risk to human health, so children’s physical activities are reduced and parents are asked to turn off vehicle engines when they pick up their children.
Or, before sweeping, the floors are sprayed with water, explains Urrutia.
The initiative benefits 104 children who attend this school, a green oasis, with its own vegetable garden and greenhouse, in a poor area of the Chilean capital.
electric transportation
Santiago has 2,000 electric buses, just over a third of the fleet. Another 2,600 are “ecological” or with the Euro VI emission standard.
“This fleet places Santiago as the city outside of China with the largest number of electric buses, a modernization that translates into less pollution, less noise and other advantages,” highlights the Minister of Transportation, Juan Carlos Muñoz.
The authorities project that by 2040 all public transport in the Chilean capital will be electric.
It also has a 140 km metro network, six lines and 136 stations. The railway is powered exclusively by renewable energy sources.
Practically the entire fleet of more than six million vehicles has catalytic converters that reduce emissions.
However, the electrification of the private sector is progressing much more slowly. Less than 1% of the cars circulating in the city today are electric.
Electric heating
Within the decontamination plan, Santiago prohibited the use of firewood in homes. Even so, in the neighboring areas of the city, this material is still used, which contributes 38% to pollution, according to the Ministry of the Environment.
For its part, the Government promotes, through subsidies, the replacement of electric heaters, which are more efficient and cheaper than those that run on natural gas or kerosene. In addition, it cut the price of the electricity rate, eliminating a surcharge that was charged in winter.
Today, one in four homes in Chile uses electricity for heating, Mena estimates.
Chile has also imposed construction regulations since 2007 to reduce the use of heaters, including the installation of double windows or the use of special materials that contain heat for longer.
But if you want to continue making progress in reducing pollution, Santiago must take more ambitious measures that reduce, for example, emissions from the transport and industrial sectors, which “continue to be high,” warns Nicolás Huneeus, a researcher at the Center for Climate Science and the resilience.
“The measures are not enough to mitigate the critical episodes between now and 2050,” he says.
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