By Annalee Jeffress, S25 Environmental Clinic Student
As our climate continues to warm and the threats of climate change expand, addressing humanity’s carbon footprint is an increasingly urgent issue. Meaningful solutions to such an issue necessarily involve renewable energy. Some countries that immediately come to mind regarding green energy might be Sweden, Germany, or Iceland. While these countries have certainly had big accomplishments in the field, a small South American country has made significant strides in green energy that could serve as a model for other nations around the globe.
Uruguay is a small country situated between Brazil and Argentina with a population of approximately 3.3 million people and 12 million cows. The country was largely reliant on non-renewables at the beginning of the century. But, in approximately only 10 years, it has structured a power grid that is 98% powered by renewable energy.
Uruguay’s energy revolution was not sparked by climate marches or international climate agreements. Rather, it was prompted by the practical issue of relying on insufficient imports to fuel the energy grid. Uruguay was largely reliant on non-renewables from other nations, such as Brazil and Argentina, for energy. This left the small country vulnerable to shortages and outages. The country recognized a need to shift the grid’s reliance to domestically available energy sources, and Uruguay lacked in stores of non-renewables. Therefore, it was natural to turn to greener energy sources.
A key figure in Uruguay’s green energy shift is Ramón Méndez Galain. Méndez Galain was appointed as the national director of energy to fix the energy supply issue. Due to the lack of non-renewable energy sources in Uruguay, Méndez Galain focused on renewable energy sources that were possible to harvest domestically such as wind, solar, and biomass. In particular, Uruguay had an abundance of wind that was blowing over uninhabited agricultural land. Placing windmills throughout the country would allow Uruguay to extract a domestically available renewable resource to meet energy demands. However, the government had to figure out how to economically implement this plan.
Uruguay had a growing economy at the time, but the government did not have nearly enough money to facilitate the construction of Méndez Galain’s plan. So, they got creative. The solution turned out to be public-private partnerships. In these partnerships, private companies took responsibility for the installation and upkeep of wind turbines, while the public company took responsibility for the distribution of energy to consumers. Private companies were enticed to buy-in to the partnership through Uruguay’s promise to purchase the energy produced at a predetermined rate for the following 20 years. Several companies found the opportunity appealing. This shifted the massive upfront costs to private companies that could afford the investment and facilitated the transformation of Uruguay’s power grid.
Uruguayans themselves have also been pivotal to the implementation of the country’s energy transition. For example, with wind energy being more abundant at night, many Uruguayans schedule energy intensive activities during those hours to take advantage of the energy availability and conserve energy at hours of lower supply.
Uruguay’s massive strides in green energy mean a lot for the country’s impact on climate change, but they are also of potential global significance and show us how a more climate friendly world could come to be. It is very unlikely that one approach to green energy will be possible and appropriate across the globe, but Uruguay’s method presents a promising possibility for other nations in the face of obstacles. A small country with a growing demand for energy and lack of economic resources to fund an energy transition found a green solution and implemented it very quickly. Uruguay has shown that green energy transitions can be made possible in the face of implementation issues through creative and flexible problem solving.