Evaluation of Geothermal Power Plants Development:An Environmental Economics Perspective

In the sector of electricity production, the existence of investment resources limitation and environmental factors are the main factors that influence this process. The reduction of costs and the destructive impacts of environmental have been always mentioned by specialists. Consequently, the drasticality of the environmental protection and the electric-energy production lead to focus on solar power plants. Obviously, in our country the issue of required resources for investment surpasses the environmental factors. Here, the main question is that in the current situation of our country, the replacement of fossil power plants with solar power plants is possible or not and can we be hopeful that it would be possible in future ? Also considering the high costs of electricity production by solar power plants and the situation of electricity production costs and social costs, this research endeavours to do an economic evaluation on the above mentioned subject in Iran. In this study, the marginal cost of 1kwh electricity production, in each power plant was estimated, then the evaluation was done considering pollutants and green-house gases emission from fossil power plants and to put the imposed social costs into consideration. In conclusion, it is indicated that using solar power plants electricity is not economical yet, but using photovoltaic systems electricity is economical in the same situations.Regarding that electricity demand, resources scarcity and the large amount of pollution, using fossil power plants electricity would not be economical .