Investors' Perspectives on Barriers to the Deployment of Renewable Energy Sources in Chile

In the last decade, the importance of exploiting Chile's Renewable Energy Sources (RESs) has increased significantly, as fossil fuel prices have risen and concerns regarding climate change issues grown, posing an important threat to its economy. However, to date, the advancement of Renewable Energy Technologies (RETs) in the country has been very limited due to various barriers. For this reason, identifying and mitigating the main barriers that hamper the advancement of RETs is necessary to allow the successful deployment of these technologies. Based on data collected from a questionnaire survey and interviews conducted among the major renewable project developers, the authors identify and rank the major barriers to the adoption of renewable energy technologies in Chile. Our findings show that the most significant barriers include grid connection constraints and lack of grid capacity, longer processing times for a large number of permits, land and/or water lease securement and limited access to financing. Furthermore, we discuss the most critical barriers in detail together with policy recommendations to overcome them.