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Chile looking at better community involvement for geothermal development

Chile looking at better community involvement for geothermal development View over Santiago, Chile (source: flickr/ patrickcoe, creative commons)
Francisco Rojas 16 Sep 2014

The Chilean Government expects to have new legislation ready by the end of the year ensuring that local communities have a closer linkage and are more involved in geothermal development

Our sister publication, Piensa en Geotermia recently reported that Chilean government is taking a serious consideration to do better to local communities by allowing companies to partner seamlessly with them, making possible the construction of new power plants easier and do better for the locals.

The Minister for Energy of Chile, Maximo Pacheco stated that “those places where potential plants want to be located, locals ask, How do I benefit from this project? To answer this, we are going to submit a bill by the end this year that will allow the transparent association between communities and project leaders. We want energy projects to be associated with the communities hosting them, so that projects give a permanent benefit that effectively represent prosperity, progress and social mobility opportunities to communities”

Apart from this, the new also shifts the payment of royalties by the energy generators to the local regions, instead of paying them wherever the headquarters legal address is. This will ensure that local communities get a direct compensation from those who are utilizing their resources.

To read the full article, please follow the link below:

Source: Pulso Website via Piensa En Geotermia