Costa Rica’s ICE asks for 13.7 percent increase in electric rates

No, it is more like ICE trying to accommodate the neoliberal belief in “privatization” that ICE signed contracts with private electricity generators and now finds itself with excess electricity, and high priced contracts for private generation. By pandering to the self-serving ideological arguments of private electricity “producers”, ICE now has to up its price to electricity “consumers”, in order to pay for the high priced private electricity. ICE can produce wind and solar for the same cheap price private owners can produce it. But wind and solar are intermittent and ICE has to ensure a backup supply so CR has enough electricity when wind and solar are down. A nation’s electrical generation and transmission system is a “natural monopoly”, if “the government” is “responsible” for supplying the base load come hell or high water. Allowing private businesses into a natural monopoly is a mistake, unless they are contractually required to lose money to supply a consistent amount of electricity when it is unprofitable for them to do so. What we have here in CR is the worst of both worlds, with the government provider suffering excess capacity and being saddled with high priced contracts that guarantee to purchase electricity from private suppliers whether the nation needs the electricity or not.