The Reventazón Hydropower Project (RHP) is one of the biggest and complex infrastructures built in Central America (it is the biggest hydropower project in the Region). The RHP has been carried out by the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE), a Costa Ricas´s public utility company, and was fully operational in September 2016. It has an installed capacity of 305,5-MW (10% of Costa Rica´s total capacity), supplying of clean energy to approximately 525,000 households, or about 12% of the country’s population.
The Interamerican Development Bank Group (IDB Group) is the main funder of the project. The RHP was carefully designed and implemented as a global model for sustainable infrastructure, taking advantage of the synergies between both public and private sector arms of the IDB Group.
The ambition of the Project’s biodiversity mitigation programs is unprecedented for a hydropower project in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) Region. By focusing on the functional attributes of an area – rather than only its conservation status, the Jaguar Corridor Program is a first of its kind by aiming to restore and improve connectivity of a biodiversity corridor, using a variety of instruments such as payment for ecosystem services (PES).
The Aquatic Offset Program, which aims to protect another river system in compensation for the Project’s adverse impact on the Reventazón River, is the first ever implemented in LAC and constitutes a model for future hydropower developments in the region. The innovative nature of those programs has been widely recognized, in e.g. broadcast on CNN, IDB publications and blogs, reports from International Conservation NGOs and articles in international press.
The IDB Group is very proud because, given the demonstrated excellence in sustainable development, this week the project is receiving a new international award “the Blue Planet Award”, granted by the International Hydropower Association in Paris.
We congratulate ICE for this new award!
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