Assessment of barriers and opportunities for renewable energy development in Chile

Chile has become increasingly dependent on energy imports and its energy demand has grown exponentially in the past decade, impacting the environment and the production costs in the economy. In fact, electricity prices have doubled and it is expected that they will soar in the next decade if Chile does not find a solution for its dependence on imported energy resources. Recent developments, particularly improvements in the regulatory framework and incentives for renewables, have accelerated the growth process and investment opportunities of renewable energy technologies (RETs). However, RETs have faced a number of constraints affecting their penetration. In this article, we review the existing opportunities and also identify and rank the major barrier categories for the development of RETs in the Chilean context. For this purpose, the analytical hierarchy process technique has been utilized for ranking the barriers based on experts’ opinions (selected from academia and industry).