http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2016/03/how-uruguay-became-a-wind-power-powerhouse.html
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How Uruguay Became a Wind Power Powerhouse
March 16, 2016
By Joe Thwaites
Research Analyst
When it comes to renewable energy generation, the South American country
of Uruguay is a huge success story.
The developing nation went from having virtually no wind generation in
2007 to become a double world-record holder in less than a decade. By
2013, it was receiving the largest share of clean energy investment as a
percentage of GDP, and in 2014, installed the most wind per capita of
any country. By mid-2015, the country had installed 581 megawatts (MW)
of wind capacity, providing an average 17 percent of total electricity
generation over the year. Wind energy is now cost competitive in the
nation, and is displacing the most expensive fossil-fuel generation.
Using Climate Finance in Transformational Ways
Uruguay is at the forefront of a growing movement of countries,
communities and individuals who are transforming the way they generate
and use energy. Meeting the goal of the Paris Agreement to keep warming
well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in order to
prevent dangerous climate change will require a rapid and deep reduction
of emissions. To achieve this countries will, among other things, need
to fundamentally transform their energy sectors away from fossil fuels
and towards clean, renewable energy.
In our new working paper, Transformational Climate Finance: An
Exploration of Low-Carbon Energy, we look at how funding can be used to
bring about such large-scale, long-term and rapid changes in the energy
sector to boost renewable energy and energy efficiency. In order to
understand how climate finance can deliver this “transformational”
change, we analyzed case studies covering a variety of geographies,
energy sources and degrees of transformation.
Uruguay’s wind sector was one of the most successful cases we found. The
way it achieved results provides powerful lessons for other nations
looking to transform their energy systems, and for funders such as the
Green Climate Fund, whose Board is meeting this week to consider how it
can best fulfil its mandate to promote a “paradigm shift towards
low-emission and climate-resilient development pathways.”
What Motivated Uruguay’s Energy Change?
Uruguay’s wind development was driven by a desire to increase energy
security. The country had relied heavily on hydropower historically. But
with a decade of dry years between 1997 and 2007, hydro’s share of
electricity generation fell from more than 90 percent to around 50
percent, leading to an increase in fossil-fuel imports (the country has
no domestic reserves). By 2007, imported fossil fuels provided a third
of generation. In addition to import costs, the increased reliance on
fossil fuels added to the fiscal burden of providing residential
subsidies. Given the steadily rising electricity demand, the government
sought ways to diversify its energy sources.
How Did Uruguay Pursue an Energy Transformation?
In 2007, Uruguay secured an initial grant of $1 million from the Global
Environment Facility, delivered through the UN Development Programme,
and put up $6 million in co-financing from its national budget. This
funded the Uruguay Wind Energy Programme, which ran until 2012 and
focused on policy reform and technical capacity building.
The Wind Energy Programme supported the Government of Uruguay in
creating an ambitious national policy on renewable energy. This included
crafting a competitive bidding mechanism for large-scale renewable
energy development and a feed-in tariff for smaller-scale systems, which
allowed non-utility power producers to sell renewable energy to the grid
at standardized prices. The state-owned utility was required to buy all
clean power generated. To encourage early development, producers receive
a higher price for electricity generated from projects that came online
before 2015.
The government also used funding to train staff at the national
electricity utility on how to work with renewable energy sources to
integrate them into the grid. With little prior experience in dealing
with variable generation, the state utility developed a demonstration
wind farm and created a renewable energy technology curriculum at
Uruguay’s Universidad de la República to train its staff. The utility
also conducted outreach to developers and investors to build their
knowledge and address perceptions of risk in the wind sector. Dialogues
among stakeholders also helped regional cooperation, with Uruguay now
working with the Brazilian utility Eletrobras to develop wind projects
along their shared border.
What Does Success Look Like?
Uruguay’s reforms provided the policy stability and technical expertise
to kick-start wind investment, with the nation now receiving more than
$1 billion a year in investment for clean energy. The country has
continuously exceeded its wind targets. The government aimed to have 300
MW of installed wind capacity by 2015, which was increased to 500 MW as
development beat expectations. Uruguay now aims to generate 38 percent
of its electricity from wind by the end of 2017, more than doubling the
current share.
Uruguay demonstrates how using climate finance for smart policy and
effective training can have a transformative effect on low-carbon energy
development. With a few million dollars in public funding, the country
created an enabling environment for renewable energy development that
allowed billions of dollars in private investment to flow, resulting in
rapid wind power deployment.
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