A Geothermal Incentive Design
- Key words
- Geothermal; levelized cost; energy subsidies; capacity factor; ITC; PTC
- Conference
- Geothermal Resources Council Transactions
- Year
- 2011
- Session
- Financing; Energy policy; Renewable energy
- Language
- English
Abstract
Geothermal Power is unique among the renewable energies - it is the only renewable that is base load. Furthermore, it has the smallest footprint, the highest capacity factor and the lowest levelized cost of any renewable. Current subsidies are not appropriate incentives to stimulate new project development. Existing subsidies are back-ended to the online date whereas the bottleneck in geothermal is on the front-end funding the drilling risk. Given the realities of government cost-cutting, we present a tailor-made subsidy for geothermal that costs less than the current subsidies. Our recommendations are intended to get the discussion going rather than be a comprehensive solution.
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