With great success ended the Geothermal Training Course organized by the OAS at El Salvador to support Andean Nations to move towards dependable geothermal renewable energy resource. The course was supported through the U.S Department of State under the umbrella of the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas (ECPA). The course brought together governmental officers from Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Chile y El Salvador.
The course was conducted at LaGeo facilities and was developed by a group of international renowned experts from Iceland in the field of geothermal energy from the Geothermal Training Program of the United Nations University. This course enabled participants to understand in deep the geothermal resource by teaching critical theory and a field visit to a commercial geothermal power plant.
The course was six days of comprehensive training. The topics ranged from: global and regional geothermal energy, geothermal project planning, exploration and exploitation, the uses of geothermal energy, thermo-economics, environmental impacts and analysis of different policies to develop geothermal energy. The sessions were accompanied by fruitful discussions among participants and professors.
The main objective of the course was to provide the tools to understand this type of energy in Andean countries, where geothermal energy is an abundant resource and its development is just in its first stages. Government officials received training in geothermal exploration and improved their technical skills, and receive tools to support countries in their consistent development of legal and regulatory framework to support the deployment of geothermal energy in the region.