World Bank reports on the opportunities & challenges for scaling up geothermal development in LAC
Report title page, screenshot
Alexander Richter
8 Nov 2018
The World Bank has just released a fantastic report on the opportunities & challenges for scaling up geothermal development in the Latin America & Caribbean Region. It provides a great overview on the status of geothermal utilisation today and ongoing development, as well as available incentives and regulatory regimes.
Geothermal energy can play a substantial role in meeting the energy needs of many Latin America and Caribbean Region (LAC) countries given the region’s vast potential.
The majority of geothermal resources in the LAC region remain largely untapped, not only in Central America and Mexico where development is more advanced, but also in the Caribbean and in South America. If further explored and developed in a sustainable fashion, these resources could meet a significant share of the base load power needs of the region, at a competitive cost, resulting in direct economic and environmental benefits.
The report released now by the World Bank is envisioned to be a decision-makers’ guide for assessing key challenges and measures to facilitate expanding geothermal development in LAC.
Based on discussions with LAC policymakers, utilities, and developers, several cross-cutting challenges affecting most countries in the region were identified, including:
i) addressing geothermal resource risks; ii) mobilizing financing for geothermal development; iii) policy, legal, and regulatory reforms to improve the investment climate; and iv) environmental and social considerations.
Based on the World Bank’s own extensive experience in the geothermal sector and drawing upon global and regional experience, this report then presents demonstrated solutions to addressing these key challenges. It showcases an array of measures from around the world that clients in LAC can customize for application in their own domestic markets.
The report provides a fantastic overview on the status of geothermal development in the countries of the Latin America and Caribbean Region. ThinkGeoEnergy will provide more details on the report and its findings in the coming weeks. It is simply too much of great information that should be shared focused on the specific countries.
Otherwise, the report is quite heavy with photography from Nicaragua, while nice, there are tons of other plants in the region … so lets find some good photography from other plants in the region. Drop me an email if you want to share some. ThinkGeoEnergy maintains a free-to-use geothermal photo database via Flickr, which can be found here: https://www.flickr.com/thinkgeoenergy … they are all provided on a creative commons license basis and are free to use with attribution.
The report can be downloaded via the website of the World Bank, link below.
Source: World Bank
