The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has approved a project to support El Salvador in providing training and technical education on geothermal energy development to advance the potential of geothermal energy generation in Latin America and the Caribbean.
14 May 2012: The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) approved a US$2 million grant to establish a geothermal training center in El Salvador to provide resources for Latin America and the Caribbean to transition to more renewable energy use.
Currently the region’s geothermal potential is approximately 6,000 megawatts, but only a small fraction is currently being exploited. This will provide theoretical and practical training on geothermal energy via the creation of a training center at the Universidad de El Salvador, which will offer three training courses between 2013 and 2015. 10 scholarships will be made available for Salvadorian citizens and 10 for participants from other countries. Furthermore, the grant will fund the creation of a Sustainable Regional Training Plan in Geothermal Energy to allow for future demand of such training courses. As El Salvador has such high potential for geothermal energy use, the educational sessions will allow experts to maximize the region’s practical development potential.
El Salvador is already exploiting two geothermal fields with a combined installed capacity of 204 megawatts, which adds to 14% of national installed capacity and 25% of net generation capacity. The project will be funded by a US$1.4 million provided by the Nordic Development Fund and US$824,000 from the Fund for the Special Program on Sustainable Energy and Climate Change (SECCI-IDB), as well as counterpart co-financing. [IDB Press Release]