by Jim Ryan
At a time when electricity prices are rising quickly and power supplies are becoming less reliable, why is there so little investment in alternative power generation despite Costa Rica’s abundant availability of renewable resources? How can we reconcile this country’s popular and earnest desire to be ‘green’ with its government’s policies which are uniformly unfriendly towards small-scale renewable energy production?
Starting at the highest levels of government, there currently exists a near total disconnect between the national ambition to conserve the natural environment, and the outdated laves and regulations currently governing the power industry and renewable energy in particular. A vivid example of this is the fact that although President Oscar Arias has committed Costa Rica to becoming the first country in the world to achieve carbon neutrality, the state-run monopoly ICE (Costa Rican Institute of Electricity) is planning to increase the proportion of power generated by fossil fuels from 13% to over 38%.
Thus, at a time of record high oil prices and when most countries are trying to reduce their dependency upon fossil fuels and limit their greenhouse emissions, Costa Rica is moving in the opposite direction; whilst the president is calling for carbon neutrality by 2021, ICE plans are calling for a 300% increase in oil-fired plant capacity by 2025.Talk about a paradox!
Our growing population, changing lifestyles and national economy all demand over increasing amounts of power, and the year-on year increase in our national average peak demand has been an impressive 5 - 6%. However, the increase in the booming province of Guanacaste has been in the order of a staggering 22%.
Over the last seven years, and to meet the country's expected tripling of electrical demand between 2006 and 2025, ICE has been playing `catch-up' by spending our tax money on oil-fired generation. The advantage of oil-fired generation compared to, a new hydroelectric plant, is that it is faster and easier to install and make operational the oil fired plant. However, the disadvantages are numerous. Escalating oil prices, pollution, greenhouse gases, and the fact that we send our nation's wealth overseas instead of keeping monetary reserves working at home should prompt us to adopt more enlightened energy policies.
Despite these issues, the government is presently talking seriously about exploring for oil both onshore and offshore with new Chinese partners (who incidentally, don't exactly have a proven track record when it comes to producing oil in an environmentally responsible manner), revealing that decision-making on Costa Rican national energy policy appears to be based upon near-term economic and political considerations instead of long-term principles of conservation.
We are not the only country to face these challenges, bus we may be the only country to face these challenges while possessing such tremendous renewable resources. Our agricultural sectors, especially those growers of biomass such as sugar cane, and farmers of livestock have a tremendous capacity to generate power. For example, a dairy operation produces tons of manure everyday. Instead of becoming an expensive and environmentally difficult by-product to dispose of, manure could easily become the fuel (methane) which continually produces power to serve the farmer's needs with the excess exported to the electrical grid for other consumer's. The benefits are multiple: the farmer solves an environmental problem, air and water pollution are reduced, the farmer's net income rises, their self-generated electrical supply is more reliable and Costa Rica has more renewable electrical power.
And yet while Costa Rica aspires to be a world leader in the movement toward protecting our planes, its government systematically discourages the use of renewable resources by the population. ICE is the only entity that currently enjoys the benefit of tax exoneration on purchases of renewable energy component, and the only one that can legally connect such equipment to the electrical grid. Those few pioneers who have installed small renewable generation systems advise those considering to do the same to keep their plans a secret from ICE in order to avoid bureaucratic obstacles and penalties.
Isn't it time for a change?
Today private generators operating largo wind, hydro and biomass plants contribute approximately 8. 1 % of the national electricity supply. One very positive effort to increase the contribution of renewable energy in the country's power portfolio is the launch of a public investigation by ARESEP (the national tariff regulatory agency). Specifically, ARESEP's expressed objective is to provide economic incentives for renewable generators and to promote greater participation in the production of renewable energy.
In response to the public solicitation from ARESEP, numerous companies in the electric power sector responded, but one was unique.ASI Power, a renewable energy company based in Guanacaste, advocated removing the barriers that discourage homeowners, farmers and businesses from making investments in small-scale and distributed power generation such as small wind turbines, biomass, and solar panels, and adding incentives for this type of investment for those who normally only consume power.
Most importantly, AS¡ Power requests the development of a streamlined grid connection process and tariffs for ICE and the other power distributors that introduce what is known as 'net metering'.
What is net-metering and how does it work?
Net-metering encourages small-scale renewable energy producers to feed excess power back into the local electric grid, and to be credited with contributing that power. It is a system that has been adopted in a number of countries including Canada, Japan, and most recently, Thailand. It has been adopted in the countries listed above because they truly wish to encourage renewable energy production.
Essentially, anyone who invests in a small renewable energy system would be qualified to apply to connect to the ICE grid with a special billing meter, or net-meter, which can rotate in both directions. The net-meter measures normal electricity purchases (imports), but also reverses direction to record excess electricity production (exports). All exports from small renewable generators provide ICE with power they can instantly use to displace more expansive and often polluting generation, as well as avoid approximately 30% losses incurred just delivering power the long distances from their centralized plants, ergo the term 'distributed generation'.
For example, let's say a homeowner or small business invests in a wind turbine such as the one pictured. The vertical axis turbine does not disturb neighbors with noise and does not require a separate tower and wires. While the family is away at work, i.e during the day when ICE typically has their peak electrical demands, only the home's refrigerator and occasional pump is operating.
Therefore, assuming the wind is blowing, power is being exported to ICE for their use to serve other customers. Then, at the end of the day when the family returns to the house to use lights, television and other electrical appliances, the family can consume (import) an equal amount of power credits in the off-peak period. At the end of the month, the electric bill will show the net amount of electricity consumed or exported by the family. If use exceeds generation, payment can be made to ICE, or in the reverse situation, unused credits can be carried over to the following month's billing period.
All parties benefit from stream-lined interconnect and net-metering policies: ICE receives power without waiting for years to build new plants at the difficult to-serve boundaries of their network, consumers are motivated to invest in their own renewable generation adding to their long-term comfort and economic security, and the environment is spared the effects of more fossil fuel burning.
These enlightened policies need not undermine ICE's monopoly. In fact, they are easier to implement with a national monopoly, if that monopoly is flexible enough to be truly responsive to its customer’s needs and will recognize the tremendous potential that new, small-scale distributed generation and advanced metering electronics offer to those willing to invest.
This can truly be a win-win-win situation for ICE, the consumer, the agricultural sector and the environment, and it can happen in a time frame far shorter than any of ICE’s other options for increasing power production, even those from oil-fired plants.
***Tomado de la Revista Utopia***
Development- Services 
