TED Talks Daily
Most countries fail at clean energy. Here’s how mine succeeded | Sebastián Kind
03 Sep 2025
Energy expert Sebastián Kind helped Argentina go from virtually no renewable energy to generating nearly 40 percent of its electricity from wind and solar in just six years, despite economic crises and skepticism. How did the country's transition off fossil fuels happen so quickly? He shows why the key breakthrough didn't hinge on technology or resources — and explains how other countries can follow the same path.For a chance to give your own TED Talk, fill out the Idea Search Application: ted.com/ideasearch.Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDSports: ted.com/sportsTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. In just six years, Argentina went from having barely any renewable energy on its grid to one where on some days nearly 40% of its electricity comes from wind and solar. How did the transition happen so quickly?
In this talk, renewable energy pioneer Sebastián Kind lays out how he helped Argentina become a global leader for clean energy growth, despite economic crises and skepticism, by finding a way to build political trust and protect investors.
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. For them to produce clean energy for decades at almost zero operational cost, which makes them competitive against fossil fuels, but only in the long term. Long-term investments are really the challenge in risky markets like Argentina.
As for the second question, the economic crisis, get this, I always knew that this was because of politics and what I call mismanagement, but there was something else there, energy. Argentina is a country super rich in natural resources, but we've been importing fossil fuels for decades, and of course, fuels that had to be paid for with money that we never had.
So it became clear to me that if we really want to make the energy transition work, we have to finally find a way to get private investment into the long term. And if we could do it, we can tackle both things at once, climate change and the economic strain of spending hard currency we don't have in importing energy we don't actually need.
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