The Metro of Santiago, Chile is about to take a HUGE step in reducing its carbon footprint. How do they plan to achieve this? By becoming the first public transit agency in the entire world to run mostly on solar energy, of course.
In May 2016, SunPower, a California solar company, signed a “power purchase agreement for the supply of 300-gigawatt hours per year of clean solar energy to the subway system,” which will allow “42%” of the Metro’s energy to come from solar power.
The Santiago Metro will get an additional “18%” of energy from wind power, which means that upon project completion, 60% of the transit agency’s power will stem from renewable resources.
The Metro is currently the “second largest subway system” in South America and currently serves “2.2 million” passengers each day.
According to Green Future this entire project will “reduce CO2 emissions by 120 million tons” each year.
Construction of the new solar plant will begin shortly and should be up and running sometime in 2018.
Happy Commuting!
