Gauging the future competitiveness of renewable energy in Colombia

This article aims to assess the likely competitiveness of different forms of renewable energy in Colombia over the next 25 years. To this end, it compares the likely power production cost for a set of renewable energy sources, and compares them to the likely long-run cost of traditional energy. Costs from global and local externalities through the use of traditional energy sources are also factored into the analysis. The key conclusion of the article is that while solar PV will likely remain uncompetitive under any future cost scenario, cost paths for small hydro, modern biomass or geothermal are already close enough to being competitive, so that appropriate government intervention may make the decisive difference in making these technologies competitive with conventional energy technologies. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.