A significant slice of the public land up for tender is in the Atacama region.
Image: Justin Jensen/Flickr
Chile’s Ministry of National Property has launched a public tender a total of 8,891 hectares of public land for the construction of large scale PV and other renewable energy projects.
According to the ministry, 179 plots of land will be tendered, mainly in northern regions – especially Antofagasta and Atacama – and in the extreme south.
The Chilean government hopes to raise up to $51.2 million plus $3.4 million in concessional rents and annual leases. “Of the total properties offered, 76% are for sales, 22% for concessions and 2% for leases,” the ministry said.
Minister of national property Felipe Ward said of the land in northern Chile: “We are talking about more than 4,300 hectares … this place presents the best conditions to develop projects of development of renewable energies, by the luminous power of the sun and the possibility of the development of wind energy.”
Land rush
The ministry launched a similar tender in December 2017, having six months earlier issued a new regulation for using state land for the development of renewable energy projects. That regulation extended the maximum period of use of the land from 30 to 35 years, as well as the term for construction of plants, which was extended from 24 or 48 months to a maximum of 10 years.
Last January, the ministry gave 11,660 hectares of free land to the Corporation for the Promotion of Production for the development of the Technological Institute for Solar Energy, Low Emissions Mining and Advanced Lithium Materials, in the Atacama region.
Between 2014 and 2017, Bienes Nacionales tendered an area of fiscal properties corresponding to 48,000 hectares, which could host 7.7 GW of renewable energy capacity.
Source: pv magazine
