Costa Rica's renewables share hits 99.15% in 2019

Wind farm in Costa Rica. Author: Christian Haugen. Licence: Creative Commons, Attribution 2.0 Generic.

Costa Rica generated 99.15% of its electricity with renewable energy sources in 2019, according to the latest report by the National Centre for Energy Control (CENCE).

Gross power production in the Central American country totalled 11,312.85 GWh, of which only 95.64 GWh were generated by thermal power plants.

The renewables share rose from 98.6% registered in 2018, while the total production from these technologies increased by 0.18% year-on-year.

Figures for renewables are presented in the table below:

Technology:	Production in GWh:	Share:	Installed capacity at end-2019 (in MW):
Hydropower	7,826.66	69.18%	2,343.166
Geothermal	1,512.58	13.37%	261.86
Bagasse biomass	72.05	0.64%	71
Wind	1,796.34	15.88%	410.915
Solar	9.59	0.08%	5.4
Total for 2019:	11,217.22	99.15%	3,092.341

National demand for electricity grew by 1.97% to 11,334.11 GWh.

In terms of gross production, Costa Rican government-run power company Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) was the market leader with a share of 63.72% in 2019. ICE increased production levels by 4.2% year-on-year to 7,208.03 GWh thanks to geothermal sources.

The state-owned company also operates the largest portion of installed capacity in the country -- 2,437.29 MW, or 68.34% of the market.

As of December 31, 2019, Costa Rica had 3,566.453 MW of total installed capacity between all technologies.

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