NEW REPORT - Geothermal power: A coming of age in Latin America?

In March 2017, Italy's Enel Green Power and Chilean state oil company ENAP fired up the first generation unit of the Cerro Pabellón power plant, located 100 kilometers north of the mining city of Calama. It marked the operational startup of the first geothermal power station in South America. A second unit would be added three months later, raising Cerro Pabellón's installed capacity to 48MW.

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Cerro Pabellón's development has coincided with a second wave of interest in geothermal development in Latin America. The first occurred in the 1970s and 80s, but was concentrated in Mexico and Central America, where generation plants were built by the public sector. The first geothermal station in Latin America, Cerro Prieto, began operations in Baja California, Mexico, in 1973, under the stewardship of state power company CFE.

Plants were built in the following years in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. But the momentum dissipated in the 1990s as hydroelectric projects became the vogue and began to dominate the region.

Almost half a century later, geothermal power has reappeared in Latin America's energy landscape.

This time it has reached South America, due largely to a need for baseload power that provides stability to generation systems amid a rapid expansion of intermittent renewable energy.