I am excited to travel to Costa Rica this summer as part of the Plus3 program. Having never traveled abroad before, I am hoping that pushing myself into a new and unfamiliar environment will alllow me to build the personal and professional confidence that will help me thrive during my upcoming sophomore year as a chemical engineering student. Having studied spanish through high school, I was particularly interested in visiting Cota Rica to see how much spanish I have really learned. One thing that makes me even more interested in Costa Rica is the country’s impressive accomplishments related to enviornmental sustainability.
One of these accomplishments is that Costa Rica gets almost one hundred percent of its electricity from renewable sources. Compared to the approximately fifteen percent of energy the US gets from renewable sources, Costa Rica seems to be much better at meeting the energy needs of its people without emitting greenhouse gasses that contribute to global climate change. Costa Rica’s geography helped the nation create such a renewable electricity grid, since the nation’s rivers running down from its high mountains to its coasts provide ideal sites for hydropower damns, which produce nearly eighty percent of Costa Rica’s electricity.
While this is a remarkable accomplishment for the country, it is important to note some caveats. Hydropower damns do not release greenhouse gasses, but are not the most environmentally sustainable source of electricity because they can be quite disruptive to river ecosystems and have unintended consequences on the environment. Furthermore, although Costa Rica’s electricity does not come from carbon emitting sources, much of the energy for things like transportation and heating still comes from fossil fuel sources. Like the United States, Costa Rica could further promote environmental sustainability by incentivizing the development and adoption of affordable electric vehicles and more efficient heating and cooling systems.
Groups in Costa Rica, like the Green Building Council of Costa Rica (GRCCR), are aware of the areas in which Costa Rica could become more sustainable and are working to improve sustainability in those areas. The CRGBC seeks to help groups planning residential construction project to incorporate sustainability into their designs. The green buildings the council envisions are meant to minimize the impact their construction and use has on the environment. The buildings are often constructed of local materials, implement passive cooling techniques in their design to reduce energy used for cooling, and rely on solar water heaters for hot water.
Overall, I think Costa Rica can serve as a model to other countries of how enviornmental sustainability can be done right. The vast swaths of protected land and national parks throughout Costa Rica not only protect Costa Rica’s biodiversity but also promote economic sustainability by providing a unique experience that has kept tourists coming to and spending money in the country for years. Costa Rica demonstrates that enviornmental and economic sustainability do not have to be at odds with each other, as many US politicians present the issue, and that taking measures to protect the enviornment does not necessarily lead to poor results for economic growth. Especially with the backdrop of the current conversation over the Green New Deal in the United States, I am excited to learn more about how Costa Rica has been able to successfully promote enviornmental sustainability while simultaneously driving economic growth and how that may apply to the United States. It should be particularly interesting to see how enviornmental sustainaility practices have affected the businesses that grow and process coffee and bananas.
These are the two sources from which I gathered my information:
https://www.worldgbc.org/news-media/how-costa-rica-transforming-its-homes-green-buildings