This country runs on 98 percent renewable electricity | Ramón Méndez Galain

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 29 September 2023

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Fifteen years ago, Uruguay was experiencing an energy crisis brought on by its reliance on fossil fuels; today, the nation produces 98 percent of its electricity from renewable sources (and even exports extra energy to neighboring countries). How did they turn things around so quickly? Uruguay's former secretary of energy, Ramón Méndez Galain, explains how they pulled off this unprecedented shift -- and shares how any other country can do the same.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ted Audio Collective
0:10.9	I'm Elise Hugh, it's Ted Talks Daily.
0:13.6	Importing traditional fossil fuels was not just wasteful but unreliable for Uruguay.
0:19.2	It faced blackouts and unpredictable power prices.
0:22.5	It is talked from the Ted Countdown Summit in 2023, Energy Transition Leader Ramon Mendes
0:28.3	Galaine takes us through Uruguay's journey into becoming a country that powers itself
0:34.1	on biomass.
0:36.0	How they turned waste into a far more reliable and sustainable energy asset is coming up
0:41.3	after a sponsor message.
0:42.8	Hey, it's Adam Grant, host of WorkLife, another podcast from the Ted Audio Collective.
0:50.0	As the work landscape keeps changing, WorkLife is a show about making your job work for you.
0:55.4	This season you'll hear about why meetings are broken and how to fix them.
0:59.1	We've just accepted grousing about meetings as this normative behavior kind of like talking
1:04.6	about the rain in England and yet it's incredibly solvable.
1:10.0	Find WorkLife at Adam Grant, wherever you listen to podcasts.
1:15.8	I'm very grateful for being here to share with you that I live in a country Uruguay where
1:21.1	about 98% of its electricity is obtained from a combination of different renewable sources.
1:27.9	A country with inhabitants emit 30 times less greenhouse gases than the world average
1:33.0	for each kilowatt hour consumed.
1:35.1	A country that produces its electricity at a fixed cost, regardless of wars or other
1:40.0	geopolitical events, since it is almost independent on energy commodities, dependent
1:45.5	just on its wind, its sun, its water, its biomass waste.
	...

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