A recent article in Forbes Magazine highlights an interview with Ramon Méndez Galain, Uruguay's former energy minister, who spearheaded the nation's energy transformation.

"We didn’t start with climate targets. We started with the problem of cost and reliability. The environment was a positive side effect, not the reason," Méndez Galain explains.

The economic impact has been profound. The total cost of electricity production decreased by roughly half compared to fossil-fuel alternatives, and the country attracted $6 billion in renewable energy investments over a five-year period—equivalent to 12% of its GDP. About 50,000 new jobs were created in construction, engineering, and operations, roughly 3% of the labour force.

Its economy has been growing at 6% to 8% annually, and its poverty rate has fallen from 30% to 8%.

That is solid proof that such changes are effective.

This puts paid to the myth that smaller population countries cannot make a difference by changing to alternative energy sources.

It will be interesting to see what other countries scale up this type of model.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2025/10/19/uruguays-renewable-charge-a-small-nation-a-big-lesson-for-the-world/

Hydropower: Contributes a significant portion, at around 42% of the total.
Wind: Accounted for approximately 28% of the power grid in 2024, with the country heavily investing in wind farms.
Biomass: Provided about 26% of the grid in 2024.
Solar: Contributed around 3% in 2024.
Fossil fuels: Used only as a small supplement, around 1% to 3%, for flexible thermal plants to cover periods of low wind and solar output

I guess that Johnny Bullsheet might use signature words like strawman and cherry picking. No myth to break, and the reality of the economic and environmental catastrophe of pursuing a wind and solar grid in Australia continues to unfold. 37% increase last year in power prices.

So what? This has nothing to do with the dog’s breakfast going on in Australia.

Half of it comes from hydro.

How long now is it that Australia has had a dirty great digger stuck underground, with geniuses having no idea how to get it moving?

Apart from the fact that what some unknown scribbler writes cannot be taken as gospel these days (such is the corruption of the media), Australia has made an absolute mess of renewable energy, and we will be reliant on fossil fuels for many years to come. Even the main urgers of transition away from fossil fuels no longer have faith in Bowen-mania.

Good luck to Uruguay if it’s true. But their experience has nothing to do with the tragic nonsense that is occurring in Australia, where our commissars are comically claiming that we are “leaders”. ‘Keep telling the lie enough and it becomes the truth’ has never been truer than it is in Dumbstralia

Interesting WTF. I checked out their biofuel situation, because hydropower doesn't apply here, and found it is a byproduct of a huge pulp mill operation based on harvesting eucalyptus plantations.

So here's an idea. Why don't we turn Australia into a paper-pulp super power and use the biomass generated from it to drive our electricity grid? Tassie could probably forget about bringing the Marinus cable across Bass Strait and sit in splendid 100% renewable isolation.

We could establish operations somewhere like Maryborough in Queensland and feed into the SEQ grid.

You could even stretch things and start burning wood rather than coal in our power stations, as they do in the Drax power station in the UK.

It could provide baseload power, and unlike nuclear, is an established industry.

Australia’s climate full of wind (and solar) idiots wasted $7 million trying to get COP, with all its CO2 generation, to come to Adelaide, but they have never been able to honour the $275 off power bills.

Indeed, they are now talking about removing the $300 per year subsidy that was a sop to struggling consumers for the government's causing prices to soar in the first place.

Who gives a flying f… about what some other country does!