The Tico Times has a report on plans to expand geothermal power in Costa Rica - Costa Rica to build 3 geothermal electricity plants with Japanese funding.

Costa Rica hopes that the additional electricity generated by steam from the volcanic area will help the country reach its goal of generating 95 percent of its electricity with renewable resources by 2014. ...

The first of the proposed plants, Pailas II, will have an electrical generation capacity of 55 megawatts and will cost more than $333 million to build, according to a statement from Casa Presidencial. The costa Rican Electricity Institute, or ICE, will construct two other 50-MW power plants, Borinquen I and II, 40 kilometers away from the Pailas geothermal plants. “This is 165 MW of reliable [electricity generation]; that is to say, they will operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This is clean, renewable and reliable energy, as reliable as any conventional thermal electrical power plant,” said ICE Executive President Teofilo de la Torre.

The New York Times has a column from Tom Friedman on holiday in Costa Rica, where he reports the minister of the environment is in charge of energy as well, and that renewable energy is the dominant form as a result - (No) Drill, Baby, Drill.

More than any nation I’ve ever visited, Costa Rica is insisting that economic growth and environmentalism work together. It has created a holistic strategy to think about growth, one that demands that everything gets counted. So if a chemical factory sells tons of fertilizer but pollutes a river — or a farm sells bananas but destroys a carbon-absorbing and species-preserving forest — this is not honest growth. You have to pay for using nature. It is called “payment for environmental services” — nobody gets to treat climate, water, coral, fish and forests as free anymore.

The process began in the 1990s when Costa Rica, which sits at the intersection of two continents and two oceans, came to fully appreciate its incredible bounty of biodiversity — and that its economic future lay in protecting it. So it did something no country has ever done: It put energy, environment, mines and water all under one minister.

“In Costa Rica, the minister of environment sets the policy for energy, mines, water and natural resources,” explained Carlos M. Rodríguez, who served in that post from 2002 to 2006. In most countries, he noted, “ministers of environment are marginalized.” They are viewed as people who try to lock things away, not as people who create value. Their job is to fight energy ministers who just want to drill for cheap oil.

But when Costa Rica put one minister in charge of energy and environment, “it created a very different way of thinking about how to solve problems,” said Rodríguez, now a regional vice president for Conservation International. “The environment sector was able to influence the energy choices by saying: ‘Look, if you want cheap energy, the cheapest energy in the long-run is renewable energy. So let’s not think just about the next six months; let’s think out 25 years.’ ”

As a result, Costa Rica hugely invested in hydro-electric power, wind and geo-thermal, and today it gets more than 95 percent of its energy from these renewables. In 1985, it was 50 percent hydro, 50 percent oil. More interesting, Costa Rica discovered its own oil five years ago but decided to ban drilling — so as not to pollute its politics or environment! What country bans oil drilling?

Rodríguez also helped to pioneer the idea that in a country like Costa Rica, dependent on tourism and agriculture, the services provided by ecosystems were important drivers of growth and had to be paid for. Right now, most countries fail to account for the “externalities” of various economic activities. So when a factory, farmer or power plant pollutes the air or the river, destroys a wetland, depletes a fish stock or silts a river — making the water no longer usable — that cost is never added to your electric bill or to the price of your shoes.

Costa Rica took the view that landowners who keep their forests intact and their rivers clean should be paid, because the forests maintained the watersheds and kept the rivers free of silt — and that benefited dam owners, fishermen, farmers and eco-tour companies downstream. The forests also absorbed carbon.

To pay for these environmental services, in 1997 Costa Rica imposed a tax on carbon emissions — 3.5 percent of the market value of fossil fuels — which goes into a national forest fund to pay indigenous communities for protecting the forests around them. And the country imposed a water tax whereby major water users — hydro-electric dams, farmers and drinking water providers — had to pay villagers upstream to keep their rivers pristine. “We now have 7,000 beneficiaries of water and carbon taxes,” said Rodríguez. “It has become a major source of income for poor people. It has also enabled Costa Rica to actually reverse deforestation. We now have twice the amount of forest as 20 years ago.”

As we debate a new energy future, we need to remember that nature provides this incredible range of economic services — from carbon-fixation to water filtration to natural beauty for tourism. If government policies don’t recognize those services and pay the people who sustain nature’s ability to provide them, things go haywire. We end up impoverishing both nature and people. Worse, we start racking up a bill in the form of climate-changing greenhouse gases, petro-dictatorships and bio-diversity loss that gets charged on our kids’ Visa cards to be paid by them later. Well, later is over. Later is when it will be too late.

Cleantech.com reports that Ormat has signed up to build another geothermal power station in Central America - Costa Rica taps Ormat for $65M geothermal deal

Reno, Nev.-based Ormat Technologies (NYSE: ORA) is preparing to start its second geothermal project in Costa Rica after being chosen for a $65 million contract with Banco Centroamericano de Integración Económica.

Ormat plans to build, test and commission the Las Pailas Geothermal Plant, which is planned for construction in Las Pailas Field, Costa Rica, for the country's national electricity and telecommunications company, Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE).

Under the agreement, Ormat is expected to complete the plant in 18 months. The capacity of the geothermal facility was not disclosed. Ormat says the new plant will use water-cooled condensers and its proprietary high-performance, high-efficiency organic turbine.

Ormat previously built an 18-megawatt binary geothermal power station for ICE in 2004. Ormat has developed four other geothermal projects in Central America since 1999. The projects are expected to totaling 150 MW when the Pailas plant is commissioned.

Metaefficient has a post on Costa Rica's efforts to generate 100% of its electricity from renewable sources.

Costa Rica is a country rich with renewable energy. In fact, it gets about 99% of all its electrical energy from clean sources, and it’s aiming to be the first country to become carbon neutral. Some of Costa Rica’s energy sources include geothermal energy, the burning of sugarcane waste and other biomass, solar and wind energy. However, the largest source of energy is hydroelectricity — its hydroelectric dams provide more than 82% of the country’s electricity.

But the electric needs of Costa Rica are increasing, and the government now wants to build new dams that would displace indigenous villages and flood valuable habitats. Local environmental groups are opposing the construction of new hydroelectric dams.

Also, Costa Rica’s efforts to minimize its own contributions to global warming have made it especially vulnerable to climate changes caused by other countries. The reason is rain. Even a tiny shift in rainfall patterns could leave the country without enough water to meet its growing demand for electricity. And scientists say climate change is likely to have a significant effect on rainfall.

But Costa Rica is working to become the world’s first carbon-neutral country (other countries vying to be first are Monaco, Norway, New Zealand and Iceland). Costa Rica wants to become carbon neutral in time to celebrate 200 years of independence in 2021, says environment and energy minister Roberto Dobles.

Wind power might come to forefront in Costa Rica — a large wind farm with 22 turbines has been working in Tilarán, Guanacaste since 2002 and more are scheduled to be installed in the mountains of Escazú and Santa Ana. A new geothermal plant, using naturally-existing superheated water to power steam turbines, is also scheduled to be producing electricity in 2010 near Rincón de la Vieja Volcano, in the province of Guanacaste.

Iceland's economy, which until recently relied largely on fishing, has diversified in recent years, with rapid growth in tourism, manufacturing and financial services. And like the Blue Lagoon, much of the growth has been a happy byproduct of Iceland's decades-long strategy of tapping sources of renewable energy. Mindful of climate change and the need to limit emissions, many U.S. states have set goals of obtaining 10 or 15 percent of their energy from renewables at some point in the distant future, and the European Union has pledged to reach 20 percent by 2020. But Iceland is already at about 80 percent. All electricity on the island is generated through geothermal or hydroelectric sources—low-emissions sources that don't use fossil fuels. Most homes are heated by water pumped from geothermal hot spots. "We are blessed with a lot of clean and renewable energy," Prime Minster Geir H. Haarde told NEWSWEEK. "The only uses of fossil fuels in Iceland are people using cars and the fishing fleet." And increasingly, Iceland, whose most prominent exports have been haddock and Björk, is devising ways to export what has been a stranded resource.

Iceland is a small island with a tiny, ethnically homogenous population: only 300,000, with more than half living in the capital, Reykjavik. It lacks coal reserves, and is endowed with massive glaciers, which produce huge volumes of water that can be harnessed to generate electricity. It also happens to sit atop a rift in the earth's crust that keeps significant reservoirs of heat bubbling near the surface. To a large degree, it is the polar opposite of the United States. Yet we—and other developed nations—can learn some valuable lessons from Iceland about what happens when a society commits to the systematic development of renewable energy.

From the cobblestone streets of downtown Reykjavik, the storybook-cute capital, to the stark fjords of the east, positive collateral benefits—many of them unintended—are evident. None looms larger than the new $1.5 billion Alcoa Fjardaal plant, which represents the largest single private-sector investment in Iceland's epic history.

... the American aluminum giant decided to build its first new smelter in 20 years near the town of Reydarfjordur, largely because of the promise of abundant clean power. Smelters require an immense amount of energy. Power-intensive companies like Alcoa are concerned both with their images and with the potential for initiatives that imposes costs on burning fossil fuels—from emission caps to carbon taxes. So when Landsvirkjun, the national utility, said it would build a 690-megawatt hydroelectric power plant 30 miles away, Alcoa took the plunge. Construction began in 2004, and today the massive plant—its 336 pots cover an expanse of nearly three quarters of a mile, the largest such line in the world—produces massive quantities of aluminum bars, coil and sheets. "It's almost the ideal place to invest, because of the combination of a highly skilled work force, an open and transparent democracy and the endless supplies of renewable energy," says Jake Siewert, vice president for environment, health and safety at Alcoa.