Uruguay, whose last president was the unofficial global people’s choice for best leader of anywhere ever, is once again on our radar for being awesome.
According to the Guardian, the coastal South American country now generates 95 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources. Renewables now account for 55% of the country’s overall energy mix (including transport fuel) compared with a global average share of 12%. Just 15 years ago, oil accounted for 27 per cent of the country’s imports; now, it’s wind turbines that represent the biggest item on Uruguay’s import balance sheet.
What’s even more incredible is that all this has been achieved in less than 10 years.
Major effort has been made to decarbonize the economy over the past decade, and a strong partnership between the public and private sector has been instrumental in maximizing Uruguay’s natural conditions – good wind, decent solar radiation and lots of biomass from agriculture.
As much as this success can be attributed to infrastructure and favourable geography, there’s also a significant degree of political will and cooperative decision-making to credit. Uruguay didn’t have the privilege of innovating their way to reduce carbon emissions – nuclear and hydroelectric aren’t part of the energy revolution – but it was able to turn a clean future into an appealing business investment.
“What we’ve learned is that renewables is just a financial business,”said the country’s head of climate change policy, Ramón Méndez. “The construction and maintenance costs are low, so as long as you give investors a secure environment, it is a very attractive.” Energy investment is now at $7 billion a year, which is five times the average in Latin America and three times the global share recommended by climate economist Nicholas Stern.
This, perhaps, is what could provide a blueprint for success during the ongoing climate talks in Paris, which predominately features nations with less favourable natural conditions and significantly larger populations than Uruguay’s 3.5 million citizens. What they also feature is planet-ravaging capitalism and deep rifts between public and private enterprises, which is where the challenge lies if Uruguay’s model is to be applied.
“We had to go through a crisis to reach this point. We spent 15 years in a bad place,” said Méndez. “But in 2008, we launched a long-term energy policy that covered everything … Finally we had clarity.”
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