The Colombian Association of Natural Gas (Naturgas) highlighted that the country must increase the average annual coverage of natural gas for stratum 1 and 2 families by 30%, which will allow reaching an average coverage of 303,200 new users per year.
This announcement opens the possibility of strengthening the implementation of Law 2128 of 2021, which seeks to encourage the supply of natural gas in homes, industries and transportation, as well as the mass use of it in the national territory, create programs to substitute fuels that are harmful to health and provide greater competitiveness to the natural gas industry in the energy transition.
“The natural gas industry in Colombia wants to contribute to reducing inequality in access to this energy service. For this, we propose to include within the development plans of the new government a global approach that helps guarantee access to natural gas service in rural areas and vulnerable populations, since we trust in the potential of natural gas as a tool for poverty reduction and the closing of inequality gaps,” assured Luz Stella Murgas, President of Naturgas.
According to sector analysis, users who are not connected to natural gas in Colombia are concentrated in 363 municipalities in 27 departments of the country. Of this group, half is distributed in just four departments: Nariño, Boyacá, Santander and Chocó, which shows a clear scenario of inequality. On the other hand, the regions with the greatest difficulty in accessing natural gas are the Amazon, the Pacific and the Orinoquía.
In addition to closing inequality gaps and reducing poverty with the help of natural gas, Naturgas seeks to create synergies with the new government to move towards sustainable mobility and accelerate the renewal of the fleet of public passenger and cargo transport to reach slightly more than 30% of vehicles running on this technology, helping to improve air quality in cities that have already experienced environmental emergencies, such as Bogotá and Medellín.
With to this law, the gas industry seeks to achieve decisive progress in the decarbonization process in the energy transition, which proposes a diversification of the country’s energy matrix with renewable energy sources, for which natural gas is essential to guarantee the Colombian energy security.
Source: Naturgas
