The costs of the environmental administration in the planning of the electric sector in Colombia - methodological aspects

The environmental costs came forth in the planning of the Colombian electrical sector by early 90's. The costs of environmental programs for generation projects were calculated, considering constraints and assumptions, some of them are still valid. The necessity to know the environmental costs of generation and transmission projects in preliminary stages of planning, as complement to indicative expansion plans, allowed the development of a model that assesses in advance the impacts and defines the costs of their environmental measures in future stages of construction and operation. The model uses geo-referenced basic information but sufficient to determine multiple impact and cost indicators. This model was developed with the active participation of representative agents of the electrical sector and will support UPME in valuation of expansion plans and it can supply preliminary costs to potential project investors in this sector