انتقال انرژی های تجدید پذیر: یک راه حل مبتنی بر بازار برای نگرانی انرژی و محیط زیست در شیلی Renewable energy transition: a market-driven solution for the energy and environmental concerns in Chile

Introduction Over the last few years, Chile has experienced a remarkable energy transformation. The investors’ interest in renewable energies has been increasing rapidly. Despite a relatively small energy market, Chile became the second largest market, after Brazil, for renewable energy investment in South America. Investment—excluding large hydro—reached a record level of about USD 2.4 billion in 2015 (BNEF 2016), making an accumulated investment of around US$ 9.2 billion between 2013 and 2015. It is expected to grow even further. In the same year, 76% of the overall investment in electricity generation came from renewable energy technologies, demonstrating the crucial role played by this industry. Chile ranked 10th in the list of top worldwide investing countries in the renewable industry in 2015 (REN21 2016). Another essential feature of the Chilean renewable industry is the fnancially self‐sustainability of this market as Chile is one of the frst subsidy-free large markets, where renewable projects can compete directly with other conventional sources. Chile’s power sector had 20,080 MW of installed capacity and 66.8 GWh of energy generation in 2015 (CNE 2015). The installed capacity in renewable energy sources has increased sharply in recent years, from 720 MW in 2011 to 3119 MW in 2016 (see Table 1). This corresponds to 15% of the total installed power capacity in the system, having then already met and even surpassed the quota defned by the Renewable Law No. 20257 for the year 2016. Among the diferent technologies, solar energy contributes to RESinstalled capacity with 1267 MW, representing the largest share of renewables in the country with 41%. In addition, there are currently RES projects under construction for 2336 MW and a signifcant fraction of them are solar energy projects. As shown in Table 1, there also exist a signifcant number of renewable projects either with environmental approval or under evaluation, which will signifcantly increase the total generation installed capacity once they are constructed. These numbers show a promising future for the development and deployment of renewable energy technologies in Chile. As a result, it is expected that the established 2025 target of 20% of electricity generation in the country coming from renewable energy sources will be met quite ahead of schedule.