Frost & Sulliuan Consultant

A feed-in tariff and specific geothermal targets are essential to the development of a viable geothermal industry in Latin America, Frost & Sullivan consultant Gouri Kumar told BNamericas."Feed-in tariffs have been the most attractive and successful policy to date. With a feed-in tariff, you get a guaranteed return for financial investors and project developers," Kumar told BNamericas, expanding on a recent research report she authored on Europe's experience in developing the renewable energy source."Germany last year came up with a brilliant feed-in tariff, and a lot of countries are trying to emulate it. Not just a feed-in tariff, I think, but also setting a specific geothermal target gives the industry an immense boost," she said.Kumar added that lobbying groups need to launch successful campaigns to promote the sector."Geothermal projects take time. I am not surprised that this is the case in Chile and other Latin American countries. To overcome this, there really needs to be more lobbying from associations," Kumar continued."What many associations are trying to do in France and Germany, for example, is to get independent companies to assess potential, suggest feed-in tariffs and then lobby their governments," she added.Chile, however, has no plans to implement a feed-in tariff for non-conventional, renewable power sources, Chile's energy minister Marcelo Tokman told BNamericas earlier in the month.Countries looking to promote the development of renewable capacity typically pass legislation to set a renewable generation quota or to set flat feed-in tariffs for renewable capacity that guarantee generators grid tie in rights. Chile has opted for the former.Chile's President Michelle Bachelet signed into law last year legislation that will require 5% of all power supplied by distributors to come from non-conventional sources from 2010-14.The rate will rise 0.5% a year to reach a total of 10% in 2024, when Chile should have about 4.2GW of installed capacity from non-conventional renewable sources."We're not currently looking at a feed-in tariff like they have done in some European countries," Tokman said. "We have a law here that requires an increasing amount of installed capacity to come from renewable capacity, but it doesn't discriminate between different kinds of renewable power sources."The full interview with Kumar will appear in this week's Electric Power Perspectives, available to subscribers on Friday.