Uruguay pulled off something impressive: within just a few years, it reconfigured its entire energy system so that around 98% (and more recently over 99%) of its electricity comes from renewables. 

It all started when physics professor Ramón Méndez Galain accepted a surprising call in 2008. The country’s president asked him to become energy secretary. With that role, Galain pushed a long-term vision: use data, modeling tools, and smart regulation to show that a grid based on wind, solar, hydro, and biomass could be stable, affordable, and sustainable. 

They changed the infrastructure and reconsidered many of the “unwritten rules”: tweaking market design, involving stakeholders, and ensuring political commitment so new administrations wouldn’t undo progress.

Today, Uruguay not only runs almost entirely on renewables, but it’s exporting power to neighbors, has cut energy costs, created thousands of jobs, and built a model others can follow. 

Méndez Galain now leads a nonprofit aiming to help about 50 countries replicate Uruguay’s path, showing that even nations without fossil fuel reserves can thrive in a clean-energy future.