Sebastián Kind

In just six years, Argentina, my beautiful home country, went from barely having renewable energy on its grid to one where, on some days, nearly 40% of its electricity comes from wind and solar.

And this happened in a country globally recognized for its political and economic crisis.

home of a world-class oil and gas industry with the fourth largest shale oil reserve and the second largest shale gas reserve in the world.

You might be wondering, how was that possible?

And how can we replicate this all over the world?

I'm going to tell you how.

I spent my entire career making renewables a reality.

I worked in the private energy sector, in government, in the third sector.

And after many years, I learned that the key to making the energy transition work in emerging markets all comes down to helping investors protect their investments and building trust where there's not any.

It's basic.

It's step one of real-world economics.

But keep that framing in your mind for a while and let's look at Argentina as our case study.

When I was starting out thinking about renewables, I was always asking myself two things.

Why were we using fossil fuels instead of our incredible renewable resources?

And why was my country experiencing recurrent economic crisis?

And I found that both questions were connected.

Fossil fuels are easy, practical, and for a long time has been the obvious choice.

A lot of concentrated energy?

Just dirty, but who really cares, right?

On the other side, renewables require significant upfront investment.