Renewable Energy Best Practices in Promotion and Use for Latin America and the Caribbean

Re-posted with permission from the publishers as a PDF document as part of an Institutional Repository collection to aggregate energy policy, regulation, dialogue and educational materials.According to the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21), the number of countries with policies directed at promoting renewable energy has doubled over the past five years (REN21, 2011. The United States, along with European and Asian countries, is actively promoting renewable energy to catalyze and achieve profound economic and environmental changes. By contrast, the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have been slow to adopt renewable energy because of poverty, lack of awareness, and lack of government support to mitigate climate change, stabilize energy supplies, or invest in innovation (UN Industrial Development Organization, 2011). Although U.S. renewable energy markets are still emerging and over a dozen LAC nations rank higher than the United States in an Environmental Performance Index study (Yale University, 2010), there is a lot to be learned from the United States’ experience in promoting clean energy technologies. A robust and comprehensive renewable energy market in LAC, equal to or greater than that in the United States, might not only trigger a wave of innovation, but could open previously untapped opportunities for economic growth. And, as with most new technology markets, the more the public and private sectors invest in renewable energy, the more affordable it becomes