The transition from a fuel-based economy to a low-carbon one is at the heart of the response to the climate crisis, as global calls to ditch fossil fuels and replace them with renewables grow louder. This is proving challenging for Latin America, however, with no long-term strategies in most countries for changing their energy matrices. From Mexico to Argentina, governments continue to develop new oil and gas projects for upcoming decades, both for domestic use and for exports. This will not only make meeting climate change targets difficult but also risks leaving the region with a lot of ‘stranded assets’ from pipelines to thermal power plants.
Costa Rica remains the only country in Latin America to have officially presented, and started to implement, a long-term decarbonisation strategy, which includes the energy sector. Other countries such as Chile and Argentina are working on it and could present respective plans in November at the COP26 climate summit in the UK. Latin America accounts for 5% of global emissions, mostly from the energy sector, agriculture and land use change. But the share is rising as countries continue to develop fossil fuels. Investing in renewable energy and planning an energy transition could prevent emissions from continuing to escalate, experts agree.