Legal and Regulatory Environment Favorable for Geothermal Development Investors

Abstract

It can be expected that investors will nowadays turn to objects that can provide -due to their reliance on natural laws- more investment safety than volatile financial products. In this change they look for attractive conditions. Favorable regulatory environment in geothermal power development largely contributes to such conditions, by legislative instruments like feed-in tariffs, geologic risk coverage, and risk insurance systems. In addition, a whole suite of additional instruments exists like governmental start-up support. These are described and examples are given. Favorable legislative schemes have already triggered substantial geothermal growth, nevertheless there is still lots of legal development ongoing. As a medium term goal a harmonization of legislation, quite different by nature in different countries, should be attempted.