Costa Rica became the latest Latin American country to introduce rationing due to drought, announcing on Thursday that it will limit access to electricity, for which it relies heavily on hydroelectric generation.
The dams that feed the country’s hydroelectric plants were weak due to the El Niño weather phenomenon, officials said.
“This El Nino was really the most complicated in the history of Costa Rica,” Roberto Quiros, director of the country’s ICE electricity institute, told reporters in San José.
Rationing will begin on Monday for an indefinite period.
About 99 percent of Costa Rica’s electricity comes from renewable sources – about three-quarters from hydroelectric plants.
“We haven’t seen a drought like this in 50 years,” said Berny Fallas, a climate expert at ICE, which is Costa Rica’s main energy supplier.
On Wednesday, the World Meteorological Organization said in a report that Latin America and the Caribbean had the hottest year on record in 2023, when a “double whammy” of El Niño and climate change caused major climate disasters.
Much of Central America, he said, has suffered an intense drought, causing neighboring Panama to limit traffic on its namesake canal.
ICE said this will be the first electricity rationing in Costa Rica since 2007, when El Niño also wreaked havoc on water levels.
Hospitals, basic services and industry will not be affected by the cuts, he added.
Further south, Ecuador recently had to ration electricity due to water shortages for hydroelectric production, while Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, is rationing municipal water.
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